The stories were the Sun-Sentinel ’s most detailed look yet at FEMA aid in Miami-Dade, and the latest in a steady stream of increasingly damning articles the team had published. Within days, the reporters’ work brought about concrete results at the very top of the Department of Homeland Security, as its inspector general vowed to launch an audit into FEMA’s performance in Florida. By December, Deputy Inspector General Richard Skinner had dispatched seven investigators to work with Florida law enforcement to find perpetrators of fraud; he told Kestin and O’Matz that he expected the investigation to result in arrests by the end of the month, but said it was “too soon to tell” the extent of the fraud. ^[39] Although O’Matz, Kestin, and Maines had gathered considerable data from people in their community and sources FEMA chose to make available, Demma was anxious to get access to the new information the audit would uncover, as it could only enhance the Sun-Sentinel ’s reporting. “It’s amazing what you can do with a subpoena,” Demma says.

December 5 story. The team chronicled the high-level action their story was generating, all the while actively looking for ways to advance the investigation. Kestin thought she could get an additional story from earlier reporting she had done. She had been calling FEMA’s public affairs office for updated aid disbursement figures several times a week, and had included these numbers in each successive story to illustrate the level of ongoing FEMA payments in Miami-Dade.

It amazed her that, even though the Sun-Sentinel had proved repeatedly that Hurricane Frances had bypassed the county, and even as high-level government officials had begun demanding investigations into FEMA, the agency nevertheless continued to approve hurricane aid payments to Miami-Dade residents. Another 3,000 applicants, she learned, had received another $8 million in the eight weeks since the Sun-Sentinel ’s first story. Total hurricane aid to the unscathed county was now a staggering $28.6 million, and the payouts showed no signs of slowing down. Demma felt that would make a high-impact addition to the series, so for Sunday, December 5, Kestin wrote an article pointing out that “no one [had] shut off the pipeline” to Miami-Dade. ^[40] The investigation was far from over.

One morning Kestin arrived at her desk and began listening to voicemail messages she had accumulated since leaving work the night before. One was from a man who said he was familiar with FEMA’s contractor operations. He left a phone number and asked Kestin to call him; he had information for her.

Tip-off. Kestin was intrigued. She called and began quizzing him about the contractors’ practices and about what experience he may have had. Though she and O’Matz had learned some details about inspectors’ training, they did not feel they had a solid grasp on that angle of the story. Now was Kestin’s chance to find out more. She expected the source to give her details on lax training and oversight. If she were lucky, he might identify a handful of inspectors she could contact. But what the source revealed in an offhand comment went far beyond her expectations. He mentioned that several of the inspectors had criminal records.

This detail captured Kestin’s attention. “Who has a criminal record?” Kestin recalls asking. The source offered several names, and further claimed it was well known that FEMA fraud occurred in disaster relief operations all over the country. “[Some inspectors] were treating [disaster relief] like a welfare program,” Database Editor Maines says. “There were other inspectors who were angry about that.” One had called Kestin to expose it.

Kestin hung up and went straight to Demma’s office. The information was explosive, but what should they do with it? How could they confirm it and make sure that this was not simply a case of a disaffected employee taking grievances to the media? Another factor they had to consider was the national scope of the allegations. FEMA inspectors in several states apparently had criminal records—the source’s claims did not pertain specifically to Florida. Nor, they had now been told, was Florida the only site of fraudulent disaster relief applications.

The source had quite unexpectedly elevated the Sun-Sentinel ’s mostly local investigation to a national one. Two potentially big stories could grow out of their information, but verifying the tips would require time-consuming research. One story was the apparently routine nature of fraud in disaster recovery across the country. Another was the presence of criminals among the ranks of FEMA’s inspectors. They agreed to try first to report the story on inspectors with criminal backgrounds. The could at least start that project, using the telephone and Internet, from their desks in Fort Lauderdale; the other was more logistically challenging.