Florida woman charged for defrauding US hurricane relief programmes out of $800k

Juli Campbell has been accused of taking $840,000 from a Fema programme

Samuel Vasquez rebuilds his house while his wife Ysamar Figueroa looks on (Reuters)

A woman in Florida has been indicted after allegedly taking more than $800,000 from a federal hurricane relief program through phoney invoices.

Juli Campbell has been accused of fraud after allegedly taking $840,000 from a Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) program set up to help victims of Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Ms Campbell, who owns Campbell Development, oversaw an alleged fraud where her company submitted fraudulent documents for work repairing homes in St Croix and the US Virgin Islands. Some of those documents mentioned workers who were not even present on the islands at the time of the work, according to court filings.

The court filings also claims that Ms Campbell instructed workers to leave time sheet blank, or to fill in false information.

The alleged crimes were carried out in August and October of last year. Some works, like James Blankenberg, have said that they never received payment from Ms Campbell.

“All she did was take advantage of the government,” Mr Blankenberg told an ABC News affiliate, claiming she owes him $40,000. ”My lights got turned off, my water got turned off, my insurance elapsed ... we deserve what's owed to us.“

Hurricane Irma made landfall in the United States in September 2017 as a Category 4 hurricane, smashing through the Florida Keys and up into Naples before losing force as it travelled further north into the US.

Hurricane Maria travelled through the Caribbean in 2017 as well, and made headlines for the widespread devastation it caused after hitting Puerto Rico as a Category 5 hurricane.

Irma and Maria caused $50bn and $90bn worth of damages, respectively, and contributed to the costliest year in US history for weather related damages. All told, weather caused $306.2bn in damages in 2017 according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.