Anonymous shell companies have been buying up single-family homes in American cities.

Christopher Robinson plays Juan Guzman in the voids of the Achievement moments before the explosion. Credit: Carlos Gonzales


** When Lighting the Voids
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This week, we present a special episode of Reveal – an audio drama inspired by our investigation into a deadly explosion at a Mississippi shipyard ([link removed]) . The radio play “When Lighting the Voids,” produced by our partners at StoryWorks, is a deconstructed mystery based on real events and real people.

The story starts in a hospital burn ward, where a young shipyard worker named Bram Ates slips in and out of a dream state. A flashback takes listeners to the VT Halter shipyard in Escatawpa, Mississippi, back to the day of the shipyard explosion that left two dead. In the final part, a week after the explosion, Clyde Payne, a tenacious OSHA director, arrives to the site to investigate.

Listen to the story here. ([link removed])

One of six care homes that until recently was operated by Adat Shalom Board and Care. Credit: Rachel de Leon/Reveal


** Dozens of senior care homes that broke labor laws continue to get Medicaid funds
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Medicaid funding has continued to flow to dozens of senior care-home operators in four states cited for stealing workers’ wages or breaking other labor laws, Reveal’s Jennifer Gollan reported this week. At least 45 care homes previously cited for labor violations received Medicaid funding earlier this fall.

“Medicaid certification is a privilege, not a right, and payment should depend upon complying with relevant laws,” said Eric Carlson, a directing attorney at Justice in Aging, an advocacy group for low-income seniors. “Underpaying employees is a red flag for health care quality.”

In May, we published an investigation ([link removed]) that exposed widespread exploitation of caregivers in senior care homes, finding that many earn as little as $2 an hour to work and be on call around the clock for operators that reap huge profits. We found that many of these senior care homes continue to operate ([link removed]) and flout the law despite receiving citations for wage theft.

Read the story here. ([link removed])

The U.S. Treasury Department building at dusk, Thursday, June 6, 2019, in Washington. Credit: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky


** Unmasking the secret landlords buying up America
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Anonymous shell companies have been buying up single-family homes in American cities.

Through the Bank Secrecy Act, a 1970 anti-money-laundering law, FinCEN – the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network – is able to keep track of who owns these properties. However, FinCEN also keeps this information from the public, making it hard to trace who actually owns property in American cities.

In July, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking information on the “beneficial owners” of LLCs – information that’s held by FinCEN but not collected under the Bank Secrecy Act. At first, the government refused to acknowledge that it has this information, saying it could “neither confirm nor deny the existence of the materials,” citing the Bank Secrecy Act. We appealed the decision, and lost.

Now, we’re going to court. In a complaint filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by our general counsel, D. Victoria Baranetsky, we argue that the government has “no lawful basis for declining to release the records” under FOIA.

“The public and the press have a clear and abiding interest in knowing who owns property in their communities,” the complaint states, “and keeping public officials accountable in their handling of this matter.”

Read the story here. ([link removed])

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A correction
In last week’s newsletter, we shared the news that 13 members of Congress, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), had pressed the Department of Labor to investigate Amazon's labor practices, partly as a result of our story on working conditions at the company. While Sanders and others have responded to our story with calls for more scrutiny of Amazon ([link removed]) , the legislators referenced had issued their call for an investigation before our story was published.
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