KATRINA: Qui Tam Time

John Derbyshire notes speculation that a very large portion of the absent police force in New Orleans during Katrina was either nonexistent cops or cops with no-show jobs and that New Orleans used the inflated numbers to scam federal dollars. Presumably, if this turns out to be true, someone in the know could file a lawsuit under the False Claims Act to recover the improperly allocated federal funds (I’m assuming without checking here that the FCA covers municipalities).
UPDATE: Lyford writes in to point out that this particular report is satire. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen reports of there being some genuine concerns about no-show jobs, but not in that scale.