Way to prevent Welfare Fraud

Monitor income by using the Income Eligibility Verification System and make home visits to ensure the need for assistance.  Recipients of benefits should have to justify how they spend the income they receive. A home visit should be able to determine the need for assistance. The purpose of the home visit is look for inconsistencies with the recipients application for assistance and actual living conditions.

http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/pdf/409.pdf

Type of welfare fraud

Unreported income: The most common form of welfare fraud. The criminal collects a welfare check, and also receives income from other sources that they don’t report to the Government. The income may come from working “under the table”, from illegal activities such as drug sales, or any number of other sources (Bustathief, 2008).

Bustathief (2008, April 3) Retrieved March 29, 2012 from http://www.bustathief.com/welfare-fraud-social-security-scam/.

Type of Welfare Fraud

The owner (Kathleen Lamson) of a c-store in Holyoke, Mass., and a manager (Jorge Martinez) were both charged in a federal court recently with conspiracy, food stamp fraud, money laundering and wire fraud, relating to their scheme to commit food stamp benefit trafficking. If Convicted on these charges, Lamson and Martinez each face up to 20 years imprisonment, to be followed by three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine (JDL).

C-store Owner, Manager Charged with Fraud. Retrieved March 29, 2012, Jackson District Library (JDL). Convenience Store News. (June 14,2010): Brief Article.

Unreported income: The most common form of welfare fraud. The criminal collects a welfare check, and also receives income from other sources that they don’t report to the Government. The income may come from working “under the table”, from illegal activities such as drug sales, or any number of other sources.

http://www.bustathief.com/welfare-fraud-social-security-scam/

Food Stamps: There are two types of fraudulent activities connected to the food stamp program, providing false information about eligibility or selling food stamp coupons or EBT cards, also called trafficking. More than $54 million of Michigan fraud is in food stamps.
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/dhs/DHS-AG-FAPFraud-NewsRelease-091908_250758_7.pdf

Kyle Bowler
Abstract

Research question- Welfare Fraud: What can we do to prevent it?

Welfare is a public assistance program designed to help people who are not able to support themselves fully. The purpose of public assistance is to help meet a sufficient standard of living by providing a minimum amount of economic security to those people whose income is not great enough. However, one of the most controversial issues in society today has become welfare fraud or abuse. Complaints about fraudulent misuse of benefits continue to increase. The most common reason is because the welfare system is easy for people to take advantage of.  Fraud is an all too common occurrence, and people will try many ways to get free money. I believe there are those that need welfare to get them through a hard time and those that abuse the system. I think we are making it to easy to live off the system, and it needs to change.