Reporting Welfare Fraud

Do you report welfare fraud? Please check the contents of this page before reporting.

If you need assistance in determining the county to call, please contact the welfare fraud hotline (1-800-344-8477) or send an e-mail to FraudHotline@dss.ca.gov.

As everyone knows, it is very difficult to obtain reliable evidence of welfare fraud. Official data on prevalence of welfare fraud based on government survey tends to be low - a few percent of total welfare expenditure. On the other hand, interviews with welfare recipients who have high confidence in the interviewer show that many, if not many, people could not report their income. Similarly, in the survey of the general population, we found that if audit risk is only 1/6, over 80% of people are ready to fraud the benefits. In most cases, welfare fraud is a moderate amount and is done by people who fight poverty, but once it begins, it tends to continue even after financial stability is achieved.

Welfare fraud is common, but in most cases it is done by people who can not make a living. In the 2012 survey, 30 out of 34 recipients who received the interview admitted fraud tolerance. When I examined 50 women in Chicago's welfare in 1988, 80% of women were working full time or part time, but no one reported their income to the welfare office. A survey conducted in Seattle and Denver in the 1970s showed that 50% of respondents acknowledged "fraud" in order to gain economic benefits. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, a former IDPA fraud investigator presumed that 25% to 50% of welfare recipients committed a certain degree of fraud. I surveyed 450 welfare recipients at Orange County, California, and found that 45% of them had committed fraud. Between 1970 and 1979, the number of fraud cases initiated nationwide increased by 729%.

Two different kinds of welfare fraud constitute crime against taxpayers and legal recipients of government interests. Welfare benefit "recipient fraud" occurs when you provide incorrect or incorrect information to obtain benefits, food stamps, or other public interest not entitled to rights. "Internal" welfare fraud occurs when a government agency employee knows that one or more beneficiaries are not eligible, but still assign or distribute benefits.