DON’T LEAVE YOUR JEWELRY IN YOUR CAR
On July 25, 2018, a thief broke into a rented Chevrolet Tahoe SUV in San Francisco and stole luggage belonging to Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Verma, a Trump appointee, was in the city to give a speech at the Commonwealth Club. A month later, she filed a claim with the Health and Human Services department, seeking reimbursement for $47,000 in lost property.
According to the website POLITICO, which recently filed a Freedom of Information Act request about Verma’s claim, her uninsured property included two dozen pieces of jewelry worth $43,065, including an Ivanka Trump-brand pendant valued at $5,900.
Verma’s claim also included about $2,000 for stolen clothes and another $2,000 for other items, such as $325 for moisturizer and $349 for noise-cancelling headphones.
The Department of Health and Human Services reimbursed Verma only $2,852.40 for her claim. A spokesperson told POLITICO that the department has a policy to pay for certain items lost during a work trip, as long as they “are not inherently for other uses.”
In other words, they do not pay for jewelry, Ivanka Trump-branded or not. It isn’t clear, however, whether they pay for noise-cancelling headphones, which certainly could be useful for political work.
Whether or not it was appropriate for Verma to file a claim for stolen jewelry, there’s a lesson here for anyone who owns expensive jewelry: if it isn’t insured, don’t leave it in a car.
Compiled and partly written by Indian humorist MELVIN DURAI, author of the novel Bala Takes the Plunge.
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