KATRINA AID MISMANAGEMENT KATRINA AID MISMANAGEMENT FEMA also could not establish that 750 debit cards worth $1.5 million even went to Katrina victims, the auditors said. Among the items purchased with the cards: • an all-inclusive, one-week Caribbean vacation in the Punta Cana resort in the Dominican Republic. • five season tickets to New Orleans Saints professional football games. • adult erotica products in Houston and Girls Gone Wild videos in Santa Monica, Calif. • Dom Perignon champagne and other alcoholic beverages in San Antonio. • a divorce lawyer's services in Houston. Source: The Associated Press REACTION TO FRAUD REPORT REACTION TO FRAUD REPORT Video: Exclusive report | Katrina victims react to fraud | Critics demand reform FEMA lost $1B to fraud, errors WASHINGTON  Sloppy mistakes and con artists cost FEMA at least $1 billion in questionable disaster-relief claims in the six months after last year's devastating Gulf Coast hurricanes, according to a report by government investigators due out today. The government sent checks to thousands of people who registered with FEMA using information belonging to prison inmates or who provided only a post office box as the address of their damaged home, according to the Government Accountability Office, the watchdog agency of Congress. The investigation found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, harshly criticized for its poor response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, lacked basic mechanisms to discourage rampant fraud. FEMA, the accountability office said, needs to immediately put "adequate safeguards" in place to "build the American taxpayers' confidence that federal disaster assistance only goes to those in need." Among the many examples of waste and fraud cited in the report: • Roughly $5.3 million was paid to people who gave only post office boxes as their address. In one case, FEMA sent $2,358 to someone who claimed a damaged house in a New Orleans cemetery; in another, FEMA sent $4,358 to someone who listed his residence as a UPS store. • Millions more was sent to more than 1,000 people who used names and Social Security numbers of inmates in prisons along the Gulf Coast and across the country. In one case, FEMA sent $4,358 to a Mississippi prisoner who gave officials his correct mailing address — at the prison where he'd been locked up since 2004. • FEMA reimbursed people for rent at the same time it was paying for them to stay in a hotel. For example, the agency paid $8,000 for someone to stay in a California hotel for five months and also sent that person $6,700 in rental assistance for the same period. • One person received 26 FEMA payments totaling $139,000 using 13 different Social Security numbers and 13 addresses, eight of which did not exist. FEMA spokesman Aaron Walker said the agency has already made some reforms to cut down on fraud this hurricane season. "FEMA's highest priority during a disaster is to get help quickly to those in desperate need," Walker said. But "even as we put victims first, we take very seriously our responsibility to be outstanding stewards of taxpayer dollars." Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, called the fraud and abuse "symptoms of a much larger illness" at FEMA, which also has been criticized for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on trailers that were never used and other waste. "Fraud, no matter the amount, is unacceptable," Thompson said. But "the disease is an administration that shortchanged FEMA and shortchanged catastrophic planning" for years. Enlarge By David Zalubowski, AP A Hurricane Katrina survivor holds a debit card from FEMA outside the Reliant Center in Houston in this Sept. 9, 2005, file photo.