DECATUR, Ala. –Eight Alabamians were arrested this week in Morgan County on charges relating to abusing the state’s food stamp program. Joyce Workman, 44, Cherokee Clem, 19, Joshua Edward Priest, 26, and Ali Alsamawi, 40, of Decatur, have been charged with the Class C felony of public assistance fraud. If convicted, the suspects can be sentenced up to ten years in prison.
According to court documents, the alleged fraud occurred from January of 2015 until April of 2016. Three of the suspects are accused of using multiple food stamp cards that the other five allegedly provided.
The federal food stamp program in Alabama (officially knows as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) aids many families in the state meet their basic needs. To put it in perspective, Alabama Department of Human Resources reported that 383,923 households in the state combined to receive a total of $100 million in assistance.
Unfortunately, the system has also been subject to some serious abuse. In the fist eight months of 2016 alone, DHR has reported that it has collected over $5.7 million due to fraud and administrative error.
Furthermore, DHR does not have any real enforcement mechanism to check for fraud. According to one a representative from DHR, the agency relies upon tips from the public to begin a fraud investigation.
“You see people complaining about it, but they have to let us know. If we don’t know about it, we can’t very well investigate it,” Department spokesman Barry Spear told Al.com.
Not only have individuals like the eight arrested in Morgan County taken advantage of the system, but companies have also been guilty of defrauding the taxpayer. Just this year, a Bessemer grocer agreed to fork over $5.2 million to the state after admitting guilt to food stamp fraud.
Spear told Al.com that the amount of people taking advantage of the system is “a small percentage.” But that small percentage has cost the state a good deal of money.
The problem of abuse is also not a new one. The Alabama Department of Human Resources issues more than $109 million in benefits every year, and recovered $4.5 million dollars in food stamp fraud in 2013 alone.
In an effort to cut down on fraud an abuse, the Alabama Legislature in 2014 pushed through a package of bills that drastically reformed the state’s taxpayer-funded public assistance programs.
The four-bill package included measures to increase penalties for fraud; require welfare applicants to submit job applications before receiving benefits; prohibit spending of welfare benefits on liquor, tobacco, casinos and strip clubs; and allow for drug testing of welfare applicants who’ve had a drug conviction within the past five years.
As of 2014, Alabama’s monthly average SNAP enrollment was 902,073 and its estimated K-12 enrollment was 734,300, meaning there were 18.6 percent more people enrolled in food stamps than in Alabama’s public schools.
Alabama is one of 27 states around the country in which the number of SNAP enrollees outpaces public school enrollment, and nationally the number of enrollees for the two programs is roughly the same.
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