Californian inmates paid millions in pandemic relief fraud
Prisoners in California including high-profile serial killers and murderers on death row received hundreds of millions of dollars in pandemic relief funds, it has been revealed, in one of the biggest frauds in the state’s history.
Investigators alerted to reports of illegal unemployment claims made from prisons under Covid-19 relief schemes discovered tens of thousands filed in the name of inmates, prosecutors said.
A confirmed figure of US$140 million (NZ$200 million) already paid to 20,000 inmates is merely a ‘‘snapshot’’ based on state prison data for March to August, with the true cost of the fraud potentially many times higher.
More than US$420,000 was paid to 130 death row inmates,
including Wayne Ford, who murdered four women before handing himself in to a sheriff’s office in 1998 with a severed breast in his pocket.
Scott Peterson, convicted of killing his pregnant wife and unborn son, and ‘‘Yosemite
Killer’’ Cary Stayner also won payments.
‘‘Hundreds of millions of dollars – that may well amount to upwards of a billion dollars – having already been paid in their names . . . it will be one of the biggest frauds of taxpayer dollars in California history,’’ said Anne Marie Schubert, the Sacramento County district attorney, who is chairing a task force into the ‘‘behemoth’’ scheme.
‘‘Quite frankly, the inmates are mocking us,’’ added Schubert, who sent a letter to Gavin Newsom, the governor, on Tuesday co-signed by nine district attorneys.
Many of the claims used prisoners’ real names, addresses and social security numbers to obtain debit cards sent to homes across California and other US states under pandemic unemployment relief schemes.
The fraud was possible because, unlike other states, California did not cross-check lists of inmates against unemployment claims made for lost income since the lockdown began in March, Schubert said.
With millions of Americans out of work, states faced enormous pressure to start paying out benefits.
By early May, some 30 million people were receiving payments, according to federal data.
A number of other states, including Massachusetts, Illinois and Kansas, have also reported instances of fraud, though on a much smaller scale.
A partial cross-check in California within the last month found payments had been sent to ‘‘rapists and child molesters, human traffickers and other violent criminals in our state prisons’’.
Other fraudulent claims had been made under fake names.
Newsom responded with a statement on Wednesday pledging to ‘‘direct as many resources as needed to investigate and resolve this issue speedily’’.