On Thursday, November 19, 2009, Federal Communications Commission's (FCC), who oversees the regulations of Video Relay Services (VRS), made 26 arrests in 9 states for "tax" fraud...
What those 26 individuals did was they "made, caused others to make, or processed fraudulent VRS calls that were then submitted to the FCC for reimbursement. These calls, often referred to as "r calls," "rest calls" or "run calls," served no purpose other than to generate call minutes that would be billed to the FCC’s VRS Fund."
In other words, they made HOURS and HOURS of bogus calls to the interpreters just to get money from FCC. FCC gives away about $400 for each hour. So that means 1 week worth of bogus calls cost FCC more than $65,000... And those 26 arrests came from 6 different VRS providers. Therefore, 6 VRS providers x $65,000 equals about $400,000... More than 1.5 million dollars every month...
That's our TAX MONEY!!!!! Tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk!!!!!
After reading bunch of blogs, one particular one struck to me immediately.
Mishka Zena replying to Tom on http://www.mishkazena.com/2009/11/19/over-2-dozens-arrested-for-vrs-overbilling-scams/
"Tom, this is going to hurt Deaf Community big time. FCC was already objecting to the high expenses incurred by VRS companies. Finding out that millions of dollars were generated fraudulently isn’t going to help VRS companies in the long run, even though the other VRS companies may be innocent. Several more VRS companies are rumored to be generating fake calls, too. I hope this rumor turns out to be false. It’s a sad time for the Deaf Community."
My response to it is this:
You are right. It'll hurt the Deaf community, but at same time, it was inevitable. It was bound to happen at some point anyway. One of the greatest irony in life is we fight for freedom, yet too much freedom is bad for us. Think of this way. When we go into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, we are so tempted to do WHATEVER we want to do... But if you do recall from watching the movie or reading the book, every kid failed because they simply did NOT follow Willy Wonka's rules. The temptations were too much.
Rules are not meant to restrict us. Instead they are meant to guide us in avoiding making stupid mistakes and treating others unfairly. We think and fight for our survival. And fighting for our survival is egocentric. Egocentrism is part of human nature. We prefer to satisfy ourselves before anyone else. The reality is if we kept doing that, none of us would have last... In other words, rules are designed to help us succeed in the long run...
Now, it is unfortunate that there are always individuals who just don't want to follow the rules, but they are still a necessary evil. They help us to keep our freedom in check.
In conclusion, it'll hurt the Deaf community, but not too much. I am not even sure if we'll notice it!!! VRS is too much a part of our life. We can't live without it and don't want to live without it. We'll be fine...
What do you think?????
What do you think?????
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