By the summer of 2005, the investigative team felt it had reached a crossroads. The reporters had been working on the FEMA story for almost a year. Their investigation had led to fraud arrests and Senate hearings. The next logical story to pursue was the one Maines had been patiently documenting: a nationwide pattern of fraud against the agency during disaster relief operations. But to give the story credibility and personality would require a new level of commitment from both the reporters and their editors. To document with specifics what Maines had discovered in general would require—as they had done in Florida—interviewing local officials, especially emergency management coordinators. It would mean in-person interviews with alleged victims to match claims against reality. It would mean shoe leather—and that was expensive.

If the Sun-Sentinel reporters traveled to those cities where Maines’ reporting suggested FEMA money had been misspent, they might well uncover a great story about waste and abuse. But they might not. The team began to consider the pros and cons of pursuing the story. Given the number of reporters on the team and the cost involved in sending them to other cities, the gamble would be expensive, and could take several months. If the reporters did decide to pursue the story, how would they determine which cities to examine of the 20 Maines had analyzed? “The difficulty,” Maines explains, “is which direction do we go and where do I think that there will be a story versus not?” Would FEMA fraud continue to interest Florida readers over a year after Hurricane Frances? Should the paper make a considerable investment of money and manpower in a story outside the paper’s traditional purview? How many instances of widespread fraud would be sufficient to indicate systemic problems in FEMA’s recovery operations—five? Ten? Fifty?

On the plus side, the timing was auspicious. If the reporters did decide to undertake this new investigation, they would likely finish it just as another hurricane season approached and FEMA again became a subject of keen interest to the Sun-Sentinel ’s South Florida readers. For Demma, the decision came down to proof. He says: “The most important part is, can we prove it? Because if we can’t prove it, then forget about it, there’s no sense in doing it.”