From the Virginian-Pilot:
A woman has been sentenced to two years in prison for fraudulently taking welfare benefits for 15 years.
This week, a judge ordered Carrie Bailey, 51, to repay $245,058 and prohibited her from getting public assistance again.
It’s the county’s largest welfare scam in terms of money ordered to be repaid, said Georgette Phillips, an Isle of Wight commonwealth’s attorney.
In November, Bailey pleaded guilty to 15 charges related to lying on applications for Social Security, food stamps, rent subsidies, Medicaid and energy assistance.
Fifteen years? How does somebody go undetected for 15 years? Are there no checks and balances in the system?
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
As Kanye West once said, “18 years. 18 years! Now I aint sayin she a gold digger …”
Well, for the most part, our government depends on simple honesty (and threat of punishment for dishonesty) to operate efficiently. The cost of providing services (or contracting, or licensing, or pretty much anything) would soar if every statement/claim had to be independently corroborated. Not the sort of system that leads to a zero error rate, but one that I think generally works.
This is a far more widespread problem than one would think. I’ve run into it with fathers who are being pursued by the state to repay benefits paid to the purported custodians of their children who in fact were not custodians. In one case a maternal grandmother claimed a father’s five kids and the mother was claiming the same five kids in another jurisdiction. Meanwhile, the mother would drop off the kids for the weekend with dad in yet another jurisdiction and leave them there for five or six months at a time. I had a heck of a time getting the state off the poor guy’s back.
I often run into family members of children who will use the children’s social security numbers to obtain utilities, to obtain loans, or to establish residency for various purposes. They claim children live with them to obtain Section 8 housing even though the kids may be living in foster care or with another family member, often under a court order from a different jurisdiction. In several cases I’ve had women call me from the jail and ask me to request a furlough so they can attend meetings with welfare officials and renew their eligibility for services and money, even though they might be locked up for next couple of years. It’s so endemic within the world of chronic welfare recipients that they’re shocked when I tell them what they’re requesting is illegal and I can’t accommodate them. There’s a general sense among this part of the populace that what they’re doing is just ripping off “the system” and there’s no real harm and no moral problem.
MB – I agree that is how the system is supposed to work. It certainly is how our tax system is supposed to work. Of course, the fact that the tax gap continues to widen because our government refuses to put the resources into the IRS is part of the problem.
My whole problem with things like this is that it causes the rest of us to have to pay more than we should.