Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He described the individuals as con artists and hucksters.

"The commission is committed to using its law enforcement authority aggressively to bring these schemes to a halt, and to continue deploying public alerts and educational materials," Leibowitz said.

The FTC cannot criminally prosecute scam artists, such as a telemarketing outfit that he said told Americans they were eligible for $25,000 grants and offered to sell them a $59 book on writing grants, the chairman said, but the agency does refer the cases to state attorneys general, he said.

But some legislators questioned if enough was being done. "These funds must be disbursed quickly," said Maine Senator Susan Collins [...]

The Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog, told the panel it is worried the auditing process the federal government requires states to use for stimulus-related programs may not catch misspending.

The “reporting deadline is too late to provide … results in time for the audited entity to take action on deficiencies,” J. Christopher Mihm, the GAO’s managing director of strategic issues, said.

But the Office of Management and Budget’s Deputy Director Robert Nabors, who is monitoring the stimulus dollars for President Barack Obama, said that as of Thursday his office had introduced a process for quicker auditing.

A website where funding recipients post how they have spent money and how many jobs their projects have created is running smoothly, Nabors said. He expects to release a report on how the stimulus has operated on Oct. 10.

Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

"nervous"?? Really. There's not a person in America who does not KNOW that there is massive fraud with this Stimulus money. That is why the Tea Parties and the Town Meetings have been so predominate across the Country. Middle Americans watch their pennies but the oversight of our tax dollars is nearly non-existent.