During the next few days, O’Matz and Kestin secured a list of public housing projects from the Miami-Dade Housing Administration and selected several of the largest ones to visit. Investigations Editor Demma was uneasy about sending two white female reporters into high-crime, predominantly black neighborhoods to report. He recalls:

As somebody who’s gone into some dangerous situations, it always gives you pause that you’re going to send a reporter into a dangerous situation... You go into some of these areas [where] every morning there’s been a drive-by shooting... and they’re walking in there with a pen and a notebook saying, "Did you cheat FEMA?" ^[26]

Listen to Demma on sending reporters into dangerous situations.
Length: 1 min 28 sec

On the other hand, Demma felt that it was only through such reporting that Kestin and O’Matz could prove that Miami-Dade residents had committed fraud. All three knew that the reporting duo could gather the most information in the shortest amount of time by splitting up, rather than the safer option of working together. And since Kestin and O’Matz had both surveyed poor, unsafe neighborhoods as social services reporters, they were experienced, if slightly uncomfortable, reporting in those neighborhoods alone. Kestin explains her strategy:

I would usually pull my reporter’s notebook out of my purse as soon as I got there and walk around with that very visible so that no one would think I was there... to buy drugs or I was a cop. And I’m always just very brazen about it. Whoever is standing outside, and there are always a lot of people outside, [I would] just walk up to them.

But time was running out if they wanted another Page One story for Sunday’s paper. It would be impossible to conduct a comprehensive survey of all 99 housing projects in Miami-Dade County in time. They would have to choose a handful to visit and hope to find individuals who had not only committed fraud, but were willing to tell reporters about it. They had a few hints from their source about which specific projects to examine and, says Kestin: “That was really the only concrete thing we had about where to start looking.”

The team agreed that the more projects the reporters could canvass, the stronger their story would be. The investigation had become a priority at the Sun-Sentinel , and Demma had no difficulty recruiting other reporters from the city desk to join the investigation temporarily. He selected Luis Perez and Madeline Baro Diaz, two Spanish-speaking reporters who could explore Miami’s Hispanic neighborhoods, and another reporter, Gregory Lewis. That week, the five of them fanned out to various parts of the county.

Although the reporters attracted attention as they walked courtyards and knocked on doors, residents were surprisingly cooperative answering questions about FEMA fraud. “It really wasn’t hard,” Kestin remarks. Residents appeared knowledgeable about how to collect aid money; many had done it in previous disasters, and they recounted trading tips with neighbors about how to file a successful claim. FEMA, the reporters learned, had aggressively advertised its availability in the storm’s aftermath, posting flyers in the projects and broadcasting its phone number on the local newscast, encouraging residents to call whether or not they thought they were eligible for aid.

Knocking on Doors

Several people explained in detail how they had obtained FEMA money—by turning hoses or hammers on their own property to fool inspectors. But these sources balked at giving their names. Those who were willing to identify themselves tried to prove that the storm had damaged their homes and that they were entitled to aid. They showed the reporters stained walls and dilapidated furniture as evidence. But it consistently seemed more likely to the reporters that the poor housing conditions they were being shown predated the storm. One 19-year-old Opa-Locka resident told Kestin she received a $2,300 FEMA check for damages to clothing and furniture she claimed resulted from a leak through the ceiling of her first-floor apartment. While she and Kestin toured her apartment, the woman remarked that she had had a “good inspector” and that “everybody that had that inspector got FEMA money.” ^[27]