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🧵🚨 Working with @WHFraudTF, HUD has cut off funding for another corrupt organization. 

Effective immediately, new grants for the Virgin Islands Housing Finance Authority are suspended.

VIHFA officials have prioritized kickbacks over helping families recover from disasters. 

Here is what we have found ⬇️ 

Virgin Islands Housing Finance Authority received nearly $1.9 BILLION for disaster recovery after devastation from Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.

Nine years later, VIHFA has spent less than a third of it.
 
The money that has been spent was wasted on administrative kickbacks not families recovering. 

The corruption goes all the way to the top.

VIHFA's former COO — who oversaw supposed disaster recovery work — sits in federal prison for fraud, money laundering, and criminal conflict of interest. 

VIHFA’s COO inflated a lumber contract meant for rebuilding hurricane-damaged homes from $3M to $4.5M, took a $107,000 kickback, and let the lumber rot in the sun, rendering it useless — a waste of taxpayer funds.

Even after the COO’s indictment, VIHFA still failed to implement fraud controls. 

After several audits, @HUDOIG found:

📉 Fraud risk management was “at or below the lowest desired goal state” despite VIHFA administering nearly $2B in disaster recovery funds.

❓$6.2M in questioned costs.

💸 Insufficient financial controls and inaccurate performance reporting. 

What has VIHFA done with their nearly $2 billion budget? Their program have pitiful completion rates.

For example:

❌ Single Family Rental Rehab: 2%

❌ Homeowner Rehab: 16% 

❌ Multifamily Rental: 19% 

VIHFA’s lack of accountability has already cost Virgin Islanders roughly $1.3 BILLION in assistance Congress intended them to have.
 
VIHFA even billed taxpayers $6.2M for costs @FEMA already paid — despite HUD warnings since 2019 that it was illegal. 

HUD’s Inspector General found VIHFA’s fraud risk management at the lowest possible level.

Yet VIHFA keeps certifying to HUD, again and again, that it has safeguards against fraud and conflicts of interest.

Those certifications are likely false — and the data shows it. 

Taxpayer dollars cannot keep funding an agency that turns disaster recovery into a pattern of fraud, delay, and false statements.

HUD’s suspension of VIHFA protects that duty and the residents still waiting 9 years later. 

Working with @WHFraudTF, HUD is putting every grantee on notice: there are real consequences for abusing taxpayer dollars.