In its first six months, a unique Butler County squad that combats food-stamp trafficking has saved the system more than $191,000 in misspending, most of it from people selling their benefit cards.
So far, 17 people were arrested, 13 have already been sentenced and 24 have lost their benefits – one of them for life, officials said.
“The disqualification is the big savings to the public,” said Dan Ferguson, a Butler County assistant prosecutor who heads the white collar crime unit.
http://liarcatchers.com/fraud_investigation.html
The food stamp-fraud squad, formed in July, is made up of one full-time and one part-time sheriff’s detective, an assistant prosecutor and an employee from Butler County Job and Family Services. The unit is funded through operating funds from Butler County Job and Family Services.
“A large part of it is drugs,” said Lt. Mike Craft, head of investigations for the Butler County Sheriff’s Office. “They wouldn’t hesitate to sell their card for cash, even if it’s half on the dollar, to get money to support their drug habit.”
He said Sheriff Richard K. Jones is committed to fighting food stamp fraud.
“He point-blank told me whatever resources we need to make this successful, to do it,” Craft said.
In November, Butler County distributed $6.1 million in food assistance to an average of 47,000 people. Last year, 850,000 Ohio families received $2.9 billion.
Every county job and family services agency has at least one person on staff assigned to investigate fraud, state officials said. Angela Terez, spokeswoman for Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, said she wasn’t aware of any other counties that have a setup like Butler County’s.
Jerome Kearns, director of the Butler County agency, said he felt he needed to take a different approach after losing one of two agency investigators along with about 50 more employees to layoffs in 2011.
At the same time “it was very important for the county commissioners that we take a firm stance on those folks that were defrauding this program,” he said.
The total amount diverted in food stamp fraud in Butler County is $191,248. It is calculated by projecting the amount of food assistance that would have been paid to people who were caught defrauding the system since July, Kearns said.
The Butler County fraud unit also was created just months after an investigation by the state auditor’s office revealed that 17,000 food stamp recipients across the state were issued 10 or more replacement debit cards in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. All of the money for SNAP comes from the federal government.
An out-of-state company that issues SNAP cards for Ohio sends monthly tracking reports for counties when replacement cards are issued. However, the state audit found that many counties were not following up on the reports.
The replacement cards are important because they allow another form of fraud, said Butler County Assistant Prosecutor Gloria Sigman, who prosecutes the local food stamp cases.
Here’s the scam: The recipient claims the card is lost and a new card is issued. “During that time frame, if you sold a card, it could be used until it’s actually detected,” Sigman said.
