Stimulus money sent to phantom ZIP codes in North Carolina

$2.5 million in federal spending created 0.5 jobs, government claims

RALEIGH (By Sara Burrows, Carolina Journal Online) — The federal government sent 2.5 million stimulus dollars to North Carolina ZIP codes that don’t exist.

The information came from the government’s own Web site — Recovery.gov. The site was set up to track the distribution of the $787 billion made available by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

It lists 479 North Carolina ZIP codes as the destination of $4.2 billion in grants, contracts, and loans. Four of those ZIP codes — 24858, 28389, 23854, and 27600 — are nowhere to be found on U.S. Postal Service maps. In the four ZIP codes, the Web site reports, the $2.5 million created 0.5 jobs all told.