Couple owes $53,000 after welfare fraud, judge decrees/Ex-caseworker, husband get jail terms for welfare scam

Couple owes $53,000 after welfare fraud, judge decrees

By Paul Shockley
Monday, November 4, 2013

The Daily Sentinel

 

District Judge Brian Flynn has ruled a former Mesa County Department of Human Services caseworker and her husband must repay $53,512 in restitution stemming from one of the largest welfare fraud prosecutions in Mesa County’s history.
Aurora residents Venica Padilla, 42, and her husband, Tony Padilla Jr., 46, will owe the combined restitution to the Mesa County Department of Human Services, Flynn said in an order issued Friday.
The Padillas had disputed the District Attorney Office’s request for full restitution in the case.
The Padillas were charged in September 2011 of defrauding an adoption subsidy program of more than $53,000 by claiming they were financially supporting two adopted daughters between September 2003 and November 2009, according to arrest warrant affidavits.
An investigation showed the Padillas took assistance despite the fact the two girls in question weren’t living in their home, the affidavits said. They didn’t financially support the girls’ caretakers, either, prosecutors alleged.
In his written order, Flynn said examination of the case by Department of Human Services fraud investigator Susan Skyberg was “well thought-out and thorough.”
“Her conclusions with regard to the amount of restitution being sought on behalf of the Mesa County Department of Human Services are supported by the results of her investigation,” the judge said.
The couple, both free on bond, are scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday in Flynn’s courtroom.
Both pleaded guilty in January to single counts of felony theft under plea agreements with the District Attorney’s Office. Venica Padilla’s plea agreement each call for probation and a four-year deferred judgment. The deferred judgment means she could potentially erase the conviction if she stays out of trouble over the next four years..
Tony Padilla’s plea agreement calls for probation.
The Mesa County Department of Human Services said the Padilla case, when filed in September 2011, was believed to be the largest public-assistance fraud investigated by the agency and referred for prosecution.
Venica Padilla, a senior case manager with the Department of Human Services’ child welfare division, was employed by Mesa County for 13 years before leaving in October 2010, approximately two months after she was first questioned in the fraud investigation. She was a case manager between March 1994 and April 2005, before rejoining the organization in May 2007.
Padilla also worked one year for the child welfare division of the Colorado Department of Human Services.
Gordon Gallagher, Tony Padilla’s attorney, declined comment Monday when contacted about Flynn’s restitution order.
Attorney Andrew Peters, who represents Venica Padilla, couldn’t immediately be reached.


Ex-caseworker, husband get jail terms for welfare scam

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 
November 07, 2013 - 8:30 am EST
 
GRAND JUNCTION, Colorado — A former Mesa County Department of Human Services caseworker and her husband have been sentenced to jail terms for welfare fraud.
Venica Padilla was sentenced to 30 days in the Mesa County jail, while her husband, Tony Padilla Jr., was given a 90-day sentence on Wednesday.
According to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, the Padillas were charged in 2011 with defrauding an adoption subsidy program of more than $53,000 by claiming they were financially supporting two adopted daughters between September 2003 and November 2009. Investigators determined the girls were not living in their home.
Tony Padilla received a longer jail sentence because he had been convicted of four prior felonies.


 * I trust the judge knew what he was doing... but 30 days in county jail and a 90 day sentence for this felony? And this guy already had four prior felonies. Sounds like a repeat felon to me. 90 days?

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

Mom gets children; DCF gets skewered

Miami Herald
Posted on Fri, Nov. 08, 2013
By Carol Marbin Miller
cmarbin@MiamiHerald.com

 " ... A young Miami mom was stripped of the right to raise her four children. The father of the youngest child was allowed to keep the girl.
Just another day in child-welfare court.
But then a child welfare judge in Miami discovered information that troubled him: A social worker who gave damaging testimony against the woman — while lavishing praise on the father — had had sex with the father, at least according to the man himself. Another case worker whose testimony also was damaging to the mother had told colleagues she wanted to adopt her children after the mother lost all rights to them.
Calling the actions of the two child welfare workers — as well as their bosses and lawyers — “reprehensible” and “manifestly unconscionable,” the judge returned the four children to their mother this week. In a 40-page order tinged with anger, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael A. Hanzman said the reversal was necessary in order to undo a miscarriage of justice.
Hanzman, who presides over child welfare cases in Miami’s Allapattah juvenile courthouse, wrote that the woman could not have received a fair trial because state child welfare “agents withheld information that demonstrated bias on the part of two material witnesses.”
The Department of Children & Families “and its cadre of private sector agents are a collective prosecutorial arm of the state, charged with a public trust,” Hanzman wrote in the order, signed Tuesday. “The constitutional rights of the families brought into our dependency courts depend upon the faithful and impartial exercise of that trust. When it is betrayed — as it was in this case — due process is denied.”
The mother, Hanzman added, “was entitled to a fair trial. She instead received the ‘parental death penalty’ in a proceeding infected by bias and conflict…The parties prosecuting her knew the process was contaminated, but took no corrective action. The fact that the lives of this family would be permanently altered — and the mother’s constitutional rights severed — was of no moment. The state simply trampled on those constitutional rights in its zeal to win at all costs.”
Child welfare officials in Miami-Dade had some harsh words in return for the judge. They said he had just recently ignored warnings from them and left an infant in the care of a relative who accidentally smothered him.
The woman at the center of the controversy, and her children, are not being named by the Miami Herald to protect their privacy.
Neither of the caseworkers named in Hanzman’s order — “lead witness” Tatiana Ashley and Michelle Sales, both of the CHARLEE foster care program — remain with CHARLEE, said a spokeswoman for the Our Kids agency, which oversees private child welfare programs in Miami under contract with DCF. Ashley was fired for “performance” issues unrelated to Hanzman’s order, and Sales resigned, the spokeswoman said.
Neither woman could be reached by the Herald for comment.
DCF’s ethics watchdog cleared the two women of wrongdoing in a lengthy report last August.
The Inspector General was asked to investigate the mother’s claims in January by an Our Kids’ regional manager. The IG, Christopher T. Hirst, concluded the mother’s allegations regarding Ashley could not be substantiated without a witness to the alleged affair. Likewise, Hirst wrote that there was no proof that Sales lied on the witness stand, and that her desire to foster or adopt the children did not create a conflict of interest.
DCF’s interim secretary, Esther Jacobo, who was leading DCF’s Miami district when much of the controversy unfolded, said Friday her agency is most concerned with the future welfare of the mother’s children — not with what has already occurred.
“The claims of unethical behavior by these caseworkers were thoroughly investigated by the DCF inspector general and not substantiated. Now, two years later, our attention must be centered on these children — their safety, security and emotional health. With all the information and facts in hand, my sincere hope is that the judge will do what is best for the safety and well-being of these children.”
Hanzman’s return of the four children occurs at a time of deep animosity between the judge and Miami child welfare administrators.
Earlier this week, a Miami infant born with medical concerns owing to his mother’s drug use died at the home of his adult half-sister in Broward. Hanzman, records show, sent the boy to live with his half-sister over the objections of DCF lawyers, an Our Kids foster care provider and the Broward Sheriff’s Office, which had conducted a study of the woman’s home and concluded she was not fit to care for the boy. Records suggest the half-sister may have accidentally smothered the infant while sleeping with him on a couch.
The mother at the center of Hanzman’s order this week emerged from a troubled home herself, sources told the Herald. Now 23, the woman “aged out” of foster care at age 19 with four small children, and sources say DCF continues to harbor serious concerns about her ability to raise the kids.
In July 2010, the agency’s hotline received a report that the mom and the youngest child’s father had an altercation. The children remained “safely” in the mother’s care, the judge wrote, until March 2011, when a relative complained that the father had pulled a gun on him.
When DCF was alerted to the incident by the mother, the agency placed all four children in foster care. Two months after that — and after the mom had mostly completed a laundry list of tasks designed to improve her parenting skills — the woman was arrested on a shoplifting charge. DCF abruptly reversed course, filing a petition to terminate the woman’s parental rights.
The mother, a petition said, had been “unable to gain the necessary insight required” to safely parent her children.
At trial in August 2011, Ashley, the case worker, testified that, while the mom had completed parenting, domestic violence and anger classes, and although she was “bonded” with her children, Ashley had “concerns as to her parenting,” the judge wrote.
As to the youngest girl’s father, the one who had allegedly wielded a gun, Ashley was far more complimentary. She testified that he was always “appropriate” in his visits with the little girl, and that she had no concerns about his parenting skills. Ashley recommended that he retain rights to the now-4-year-old daughter.
Sales, the order said, worked with the mother and her kids from October 2010 through the following January. Sales dropped the case, she testified, because she became fearful of the mother following a fight she witnessed between the mother and another woman. The mother insists that no such incident occurred, the judge wrote.
At a hearing on the mother’s concerns over the fairness of her trial, and in comments to the inspector general, Ashley strongly denied having a sexual relationship with the father. The father himself acknowledged the affair. The caseworker had begun “flirting” with him “while the two were in her car discussing what he had to do to get his daughter back,” the man testified. “They eventually wound up in the back seat having intercourse,” Hanzman wrote.
And, although the inspector general wrote that there were no witnesses, the father’s brother testified that he was at his mother’s house when the father and Ashley were in a bedroom having sex.
The mother of the children arrived at the father’s house in August 2011 while he and Ashley were “fooling around” in a back bedroom, the father testified. The father’s brother alerted him that the mother was walking up the stairs to see him. She confronted the couple and hit the father with a mop stick, the judge’s order said.
The caseworker, the father testified, told him that neither she nor CHARLEE were eager to sever his rights to the youngest child. He said he failed to disclose the sexual relationship out of fear that it would interfere with his custody rights.
As to Sales, numerous people — including several employees of CHARLEE — testified that she wanted to adopt the children.
So concerned were CHARLEE administrators about Sales’ desire to adopt the kids that they asked an Our Kids boss if it made sense to transfer the case to another foster care agency “to avoid any kind of conflict of interest.” The administrator, Hanzman wrote, refused the transfer request. Another judge who was presiding over the case was never told about the alleged conflict.
That omission, Hanzman wrote, “can only be charitably characterized as blatant incompetency.”... "

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/08/v-print/3740811/mom-gets-children-dcf-gets-skewered.html#storylink=cpy

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

A Republic, Not A Democracy. New Deal or Double Dealing?

" ... It was under Wilson that the first huge legislative steps to break down what the Romans would have called "our mixed constitution" of a republic, and convert it into the homogenous jelly of a democracy, got under way with such measures as the direct election of Senators. And it was under Wilson that the first great propaganda slogan was coined and emblazoned everywhere, to make Americans start thinking favorably of democracies and forget that we had a republic. This was, of course,

the slogan of the first World War: "To make the world safe for democracy." If enough Americans had, by those years, remembered enough of their own history, they would have been worrying about how to make the world safe from democracy. But the great deception and the great conspiracy were already well under way.

New Deal or Double Dealing?

The conspirators had to proceed slowly and patiently, nevertheless, and to have their allies and dupes do the same. For in the first place the American people could not have been swept too fast and too far in this movement without enough alarms being sounded to be heard and heeded. And in the second place, after the excitement of World War I had sunk into the past, and America was returning to what Harding called "normalcy," there was a strong revulsion against the whole binge of demagoguery and crackpot idealism which had been created under Woodrow Wilson, and which had been used to give us this initial push on the road towards ultimate disaster. And during this period from 1920 until the so-called great depression could be deliberately accentuated, extended, and increased to suit the purposes of the Fabian conspirators, there was simply a germi-nation period for the seeds of destruction which the conspirators had planted.

Not until Franklin D. Roosevelt came to power in 1933 did the whole Communist-propelled and Communist-managed drive again begin to take visible and tangible and positive steps in their program to make the United States ultimately succumb to a one-world Communist tyranny. Most conservative Americans are today well aware of many of those steps and of their significance; but there are still not enough who realize how important to Communist plans was the two-pronged drive to convert the American republic into a democracy and to make the American people accept the change without even knowing there had been one. From 1933 on, however, that drive and that change moved into high gear, and have been kept there ever since. ... "

There is an eight page PDF titled:

Republics and Democracies

"Robert Welch founded The John Birch Society in 1958 and led it until just prior to his death in 1985. This essay was first delivered as a speech at the Constitution Day luncheon of We, The People in Chicago, on September 17, 1961.

The principles he espoused in that speech are timeless. The American Republic will endure only so long as those principles

are sufficiently understood by each succeeding generation of Americans."

THE NEW AMERICAN/JUNE30, 1986

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

Veterans of the USA - The Goads

This is a classic tribute to the many men and women who have gone before us.
We take this moment to say, THANK YOU, for FREEDOM in the U.S.A.

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

WND EXCLUSIVE. Federal database to include your children? Regulations creating repository for 'every public school student's personal information'

The federal government is laying the foundation for a national database that could include all of the personal details of every student in every public school in every state, warns a report by the leading homeschool advocacy group.

The report, compiled by Will Estrada and Katie Tipton of the Home School Legal Defense Association, points out that a “slew of new federal incentives and federally funded data models have spurred states to monitor students’ early years, performance in college, and success in the workforce by following ‘individuals systematically and efficiently across state lines.’”

The authors “believe that this expansion of state databases is laying the foundation for a national database filled with personal student data.”

The report notes that the U.S. Department of Education is banned by law from creating a national data system, but under the Obama administration, new regulations have opened the door.

Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, parents were promised they could access their children’s personally identifiable information collected by schools. But the schools were banned from sharing the details with third parties.

The law explains that personally identifiable information includes names of family members, address, Social Security number, date and place of birth, disciplinary record and biometric record.

The new report says, however, the Department of Education has reshaped FERPA through regulations so that “any government or private entity that the department says is evaluating an education program has access to students’ personally identifiable information.”

Postsecondary institutes and workforce education programs can also be given the data.

While the change has prompted a still-unresolved lawsuit from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the framework of a national database slowly is slowly being implemented, the report says.

The Home School Legal Defense Association has long opposed the creation of a national database.

“We believe that it would threaten the privacy of students, be susceptible to abuse by government officials or business interests, and jeopardize student safety,”  the report says. “We believe that detailed data systems are not necessary to educate young people. Education should not be an Orwellian attempt to track students from preschool through assimilation into the workforce.”

The report points out that guidelines for building state longitudinal data systems that can collect and link personally identifiable information across state lines have been released by task forces funded by both the Department of Education and special interest groups

Many of the recommendations were compiled in the National Education Data Model, a project funded by the Department of Education and overseen by the Council for Chief State School Officers, one of the organizations that created Common Core.

Already, 18 states and many local education agencies are building databases, the report says, and other states are using similar database models.

“Concentrating data collection around a few models means that states are getting closer and closer to keeping the same data and using the some interoperable technology to store it,” HSLDA reports.

The report says 46 states now have databases that can track students from preschool through the workforce.

Several other federal programs also are pushing the creation of databases, including Race to the Top, which was to allocate $4.35 billion to schools that make “certain changes” in their policies, including the adoption of the Common Core initiative, which seeks to standardize curricula nationally.

“Every state that agrees to the Common Core in order to receive RTTT funding also commits ‘to design, develop, and implement statewide P-20 (preschool through workforce) longitudinal data systems’ that can be used in part or in whole by other states,” the report says.

HSLDA warns that the “heavy involvement of the federal government in enticing states to create databases of student-specific data that are linked between states is creating a de facto centralized database.”

“Before our eyes a ‘national database’ is being created in which every public school student’s personal information and academic history will be stored,” the report says.

The authors of Common Core, the report notes, “have been heavily involved in developing data models and overseeing data collection.”

The impact might someday be measured in lost dreams and evaporated opportunities, the report suggests.

“A crucial part of the responsibility of parents is protecting the privacy of their children. This enables parents not only to guard their children’s physical safety, but also to nurture their individuality and secure opportunities for them to pursue their dreams apart from government interference,” the report says.

“The rise of national databases threatens these freedoms.”
=================================================

FAQ

1. What is the Common Core?

The Common Core State Standards (“the Common Core”) are two sets of K–12 academic standards that outline what students are expected to learn in English language arts and mathematics each year from kindergarten through high school. The goal of this checklist is not literacy, proficiency, or increased graduation rates but to make students “college- and career-ready.”¹ The Common Core was written by the National Governors Association (NGA)—an organization of governors, their head staff members, and policy makers—and the Council of Chief State School Officials (CCSSO). States receive Race to the Top (RTTT) federal funding for committing to adopt and implement the Common Core and to collect student data from preschool through the workforce. Read the topic paper >>

2. Is the Common Core already being implemented?

3. How is the federal government involved in the Common Core?

4. Does the Common Core have a philosophical bias?

5. Does the Common Core provide for individualized education?

6. Is there any evidence that centralized education works better than decentralized education?

7. Will the Common Core impact homeschools and private schools?

8. Does the Common Core lead to a national curriculum?

9. Does it matter that testing is being aligned with the Common Core?

10. Does the Common Core include a national database?

11. Who supports the Common Core and why?

12. Who opposes the Common Core and why?



*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

Purpose vs. Power: Parens Patriae and Agency Self-Interest

Daniel L. Hatcher

University of Baltimore - School of Law

2012

New Mexico Law Review, Vol. 42, No. 1, p. 159, 2012

Abstract:     

The purpose of human service agencies to serve vulnerable populations such as abused and neglected children derives from the common law doctrine of parens patriae, embodying the inherent role of the state as parent of the country. However, along with this foundational purpose, the parens patriae doctrine also provides power that is illusive to public knowledge and oversight. To maintain their cloak of power, the very agencies created to fulfill the parens patriae obligations — to protect the rights of children — have systematically battled the children’s efforts to claim those rights as their own. Also, the agencies have now come to view their child beneficiaries as a source of revenue. As the agencies continue to face bleak budget outlooks, anti-tax sentiment, and the desire to cut state spending, revenue maximization strategies have led to conflicts between the obligation to serve the interests of children and the fiscal interests of agency self-preservation and growth. Considering just one of the agency practices of treating children as a revenue source, foster care agencies across the country are taking over a quarter of a billion dollars each year from foster children in their care. Part I of the article describes the conflict between parens patriae purpose and power in its historical, theoretical, and practical context. Part II exposes the details of self-interested fiscal pursuits of human services agencies. Part III explains the additional layers of interrelationships between the agencies and the federal government, the poverty industry, and their parent states that both heighten and further complicate the conflict. The article concludes with recommendations to restore purity to parens patriae, both in theory and in agency application.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 44

It can be downloaded from HERE.

It can also be read from "My library of publications". It is labeled: "Purpose vs. Power..." on the book shelf in the right hand column of this page.

*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207

"THE REST OF THE STORY"

It's amazing that what Paul Harvey predicted in 1965 has come true today. 

And now "THE REST OF THE STORY"



*The posts made in this blog are of our opinion only* Without Prejudice UCC 1-207