I am very confident that Groucho Marx, who popularized the “hello I must be going” line in a very humorous song, did not have someone like Iman Osman in mind. But his situation fits perfectly.
From Michael Austin’s article at the Western Journal, via msn.com:
Iman Osman, a refugee from Somalia who had been sworn on to the Lewiston City Council in Maine this week, resigned only hours after a news investigation revealed alleged fraud at a nonprofit he runs.
Osman leads a group called the Lewiston Auburn Youth Network, which received money to help victims in the wake of the October 2023 shooting in the area, which killed 18.
But when NewsNation reported on Wednesday that nearly $2 million in funds for the victims were instead given to 29 nonprofits — including seven run by Somalis — Osman’s group was one of the entities implicated.
Amy Sussman, whose nephew Max Hathaway was killed in the shooting, investigated and learned that $1.9 million earmarked for victims instead went to the nonprofits.
“To learn that 29 nonprofits receive money from that fund, I didn’t understand that,” she told NewsNation.
“They raised money for nonprofits on the backs of 18 people who were murdered, 13 people who were shot, and 136 people who escaped their attempted murder,” she said.
“They used that to raise money for nonprofits.”
Lovely. Just lovely.
And, sadly, another example of fraud from within the Somali community.
Let’s remember – again – that this does NOT stand as any indictment of the entire immigrant Somali population. It does NOT mean there aren’t Somali immigrants – a great many of them, I would think – living honest lives and not cheating anyone out of anything.
But let’s also be honest enough to remember that this kind of fraud seems to have a disproportionate presence within the Somali immigrant population. And, therefore, that law enforcement efforts/investigations should, logically, be directed more toward that population.
Let’s hope that only the bad folks – Somali or non-Somali – get theirs, and the good folks are left to live their lives in peace.
May this hope not be a case of “hello, I must be dreaming”.
