INTERESTING ARTICLE BELOW posted by Sun Sentinel. Warfare Fraud goes on in every state, every day. Take them all down. A post ok ne of you posted couple weeks ago. YOU HEAR ABOUT MEDICARE RUNNING OUT OF MONEY. NEVER HAVE I HEARD THRM SAY WELFARE WAS RUNNING OUT. MANY OF THEM ARE GENERATIONAL WELFARE RECIPIENTS. They owned a $1.2 million, 83-foot yacht that was docked in South Florida. They lived in waterfront homes in Minnesota and in Lighthouse Point, Fla., and had $3 million tucked away in various bank accounts. He was the successful, wealthy executive of a Miami-based broadcasting business; she, the owner of a company that bred pedigree Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, including one that won an award at the Westminster dog show. And all the while, for about a decade, the Chisholms collected food stamps, Medicaid and welfare. First they got it from Minnesota, then Florida, then — for about a year — both, simultaneously. When Andrea gave birth to a son in Palm Beach in 2007, Minnesota picked up the $22,000 tab. When the couple moved north after a little more than two years in the Sunshine State, Florida kept paying out their benefits. “These rich folks ripped off the system,” said Hennepin County attorney Mike Freeman, as he announced fraud charges against the couple. “And I will assure you that this office is going to do every darn thing we can do to make sure these people do hard time.” If they can find them. Officials in Minnesota say they believe Andrea Lynne Chisholm, 54, and Colin A.J. Chisholm, III, 62, have left the country and headed “someplace warm.” The Lord and Lady have been on the run for about six weeks. In Florida, the Department of Children and Families is still reviewing the case. If evidence of fraud is turned up here, another investigation could be launched, said Ashley Carr, a spokeswoman for Florida Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater. In all, the Chisholms fraudulently took $167,420 in benefits from Minnesota, according to a criminal complaint filed in Hennepin County. About $60,000 of it went toward massages at a spa. On public assistance forms they filled out yearly, they forgot to mention their $1.2 million yacht docked in Florida, Freeman said. Or the $1.6 million house they rented on Lake Minnetonka. Oh, and the Chisholms also had about $3 million tucked away in various bank accounts, the charges say. “These were rich folks ripping off the system,” said Freeman, whose tone moved from humor to anger. “I will make sure they do hard time.” The story the duo told benefit workers to reel in that money is more than a little different than the life they were actually leading. In public assistance paperwork filled out between 2004 and 2012, they claimed they had to live with Andrea Chisholm’s mom in Minneapolis. They said they had no jobs, no cars and, at one point, just $80 cash to their names, the criminal complaint said. Meanwhile, Colin Chisholm was telling potential investors in TCN Networks, a satellite television company he owned, that he had assets totaling $97 million. “He’s a con artist,” said Virginia Mance Chisholm of North Carolina, who was married to him for more than 20 years and helped investigators in Minnesota build their case. “This is what he did for a living.” In 2004, at same time the Chisholms were beginning to apply for benefits in Minnesota, the couple were also negotiating the purchase of $1.2 million, Fort Lauderdale-based 1963 yacht called the “Wishing Star.” Colin Chisholm told the yacht’s owner, Richard Ross of Stuart, that he controlled about $30 million in network television advertising on CNBC. Ross and the Chisholms agreed to a down payment of $220,000, monthly payments of $7,500 and a lump sum payment of $157,000, due in March 2005. “It’s outrageous,” Freeman said. “You hear of people getting public assistance when they’re having a hard time in their lives and getting it back together. And then you see this.” For a few months, the couple made their monthly payments. Then they stopped and the Coast Guard seized the yacht — or, as Andrea Chisholm later claimed to a lawyer, “stole” it. By that time, the couple were renting a waterfront home in Lighthouse Point. They staged a mighty battle to get the boat back, but after a trial in federal court, the judge sided with Ross. He wrote that Colin Chisholm’s testimony was “almost entirely lacking in credibility … at best, evasive, and at worst, perjurious.” The Chisholms left Florida for Minnesota in 2008. They moved into a luxury, $1.6 million house on Lake Minnetonka with Andrea Chisholm’s elderly grandmother, Eloise Heidecker, who she gained power of attorney over. The pair funneled money from their businesses through her bank accounts, hiding it from authorities, according to the Minnesota complaint. The Chisholms used cash to pay their $2,750 monthly rent. The several hundred thousand dollars in Heidecker’s bank account “included transactions that would not be expected for an elderly woman with an Alzheimer’s diagnosis,” the criminal complaint said. That includes $23,000 in charges for airfare, hotels in New York City, California and Florida, cellphone payments and fine dining — all in just in one month. Mance Chisholm said her ex-husband was a convincing salesman, had “delusions of grandeur” and always wanted to live large. If he had worked as hard at selling something legitimate, he “really would be a millionaire now,” she said. “He could sell ice cream to a snowman,” Mance Chisholm said. “He could have been the best used car salesman in the world. He could sell you anything.”
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 19:01:50 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015