Assistant City Attorney Thomas Carruthers on Koury's $200,000 "settlement" from the IFYI and a link to the Yes! Weekly article

http://www.greensboro-nc.gov/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=23416

"PAY TO GET PAID AND THE CITY OF GREENSBORO

A September 2012 Greensboro City Council agenda packet “Report of Disbursements” detailed a $200,000 payment to Koury Corporation, dated  July of that year. The payment was for expenses related to a booster pump system at The Village at North Elm. Greensboro’s City Council did not vote to approve the payment.

The “reimbursement” to Koury Corporation was denied by prior city manager Rashad Young. The 2012 payment was advocated for, without transparent public disclosure, by former City Manager Denise Turner Roth, and approved by former city attorney Mujeeb Shah- Khan as a “Settlement of Claims.” This avoided the payment being a publicly disclosed reimbursement requiring a City Council vote."

http://www.yesweekly.com/triad/article-17258-pay-to-get-paid-and-the-city-of-greensboro.html
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So what now?

Does our community ignore it?

Does the story go no farther than an alternative weekly newspaper?

Our white collar law enforcement authorities have done nothing as yet.

If recent past is prologue, they may very well do nothing in this case.

Ignore it and move on?

How very early twenty first century American that would be.

No one went to jail for massive fraud and insider trading from the financial crisis.

No one was held responsible.

Why should these connected folks be held to account now?

It's the new American way.

Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting cognitions

(e.g., ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) simultaneously.

...people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance

by altering existing cognitions or adding new ones

to create a consistent belief system.

Wiki

Can what you think may be turn out more like what you thought
even if it doesn't?

Can many believe what they want
even if what they want to believe isn’t true?

A myth is a fixed way of looking at the world which cannot be destroyed

because, looked at through the myth

all evidence supports that myth

Edward de Bono

What if what you think isn't?
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"Fraud is a deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain

...As a legal construct, fraud is both a civil wrong (i.e., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud and/or recover monetary compensation) and a criminal wrong (i.e., a fraud perpetrator may be prosecuted and imprisoned by governmental authorities).

Defrauding people or organizations of money or valuables is the usual purpose of fraud, but it sometimes instead involves obtaining benefits without actually depriving anyone of money or valuables, such as obtaining a drivers license by way of false statements made in an application for the same."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud