Congressman Patrick Murphy – Blowfish or outright fraud?

I happened to be watching “Facing South Florida” a local show hosted by Jim Defede which focused on local politics. This show released the first part of the results of their four month investigation into Florida Congressman Patrick Murphy, whose entire resume, according to the report, is a weave of gross exaggerations.

It got me wondering as to how often this happens in local elections where the election is too big for everyone to know each other and too small for the scrutiny a candidate gets in a national level election. It certainly seems from this report that Patrick Murphy’s shiny image is entirely manufactured based on the small insignificant resume of a rich kid sponging off his daddy.  In short, a blowfish (tiny fish looks big because its full of nothing).

Murphy paints himself as an unqualified success, a man who has influence in fortune 500 companies, and a successful businessman.

“As a fully-licensed CPA, Patrick is a member of the Florida Institute of Certified Public Accountants,” said Joshua Karp, the campaign’s communications director. “Patrick worked at Deloitte from 2007 to 2010 as an auditor for Fortune 500 companies. Patrick’s high-quality work and strong work ethic earned him promotions in which he steadily assumed more responsibility.”

Murphy was never a CPA in Florida, he went to Colorado to get his certification where it is easier to get. He never lived there or worked there. According to the report it took him 9 times to pass the Colorado CPA exam.

At Deloitte and Touche where he  he was “an auditor for Fortune 500 companies”  he is listed as an “auditing assistant.” He said he spent “several years” doing that, it was actually two and a half. This is not the mark of a success, sound pretty mediocre to me.

In the wake of the BP disaster he started a company called Coastal Environmental Services to do oil clean up. Except he didn’t actually own it, it was owned and financed by his father’s construction company. Murphy clamied he had ‘several contracts’ but he never signed a single contract to clean up oil.

His company bought another company that did have two contracts, but the Coast guard called off those operations shortly thereafter. In nearly six years his boats “have not generated a penny of revenue.” Now he is paying rent to store the boats, six years, no new contracts, a huge loser. Without daddy’s support he would be bankrupt.

As an entrepreneur myself, this sure seems like an abject failure that cost Murphy’s daddy a lot of money. And yet he has received numerous awards including from Keep Martin Beautiful with their Environmental Leadership Award in 2014, named the 2014 Champion of the Everglades by Audubon Florida, and was given the Distinguished Public Service Award from the Everglades Coalition in 2015. 

According to the report, Murphy’s father contributed several hundred thousand dollars to Murphy’s campaign to get him started. Its pretty clear he would not be a Congressman without family support. This is not unusual in elections, but its another sign that Murphy has no ability to take care of his own business.

This is a man who is on the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Select Committee on Intelligence. These are major responsibilities for such a light weight. 

From this author’s point of view, Murphy is a small medicre man who won an election because he was able to deceive voters into thinking he was a great success.

Ask yourself, how much of a crime is this? Do we even consider the word “fraud”? Doesn’t America deserve better?