2,300 Deceased Pennsylvanians On Welfare, New Audit Shows

More than 2,300 deceased Pennsylvanians received welfare benefits for as long as a year after their death, a new audit by the Department of Human Services has revealed.

The audit, conducted by the Auditor General and released Wednesday, was a comprehensive review of the administration of public assistance benefits by the DHS between July 2010 and April 2016. Those benefits include welfare and food stamps and are paid through Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards.

The audit, which resulted in 25 recommendations, uncovered potential fraud, including weaknesses in monitoring who is receiving benefits and inappropriate EBT card usage, according to a summary.

Among the most striking findings:

• DHS policy allows public assistance benefits to be paid to recipients up to a year after their death — and many took advantage of that policy. For example, between July 2013 and June 2014, the state paid nearly $700,000 in welfare benefits to 2,324 Pennsylvanians who were not alive.
• DHS does not perform procedures to detect theft of EBT card benefits after recipients are deceased.
• Out-of-state usage of EBT benefits exceeds $70 million a year, including money spent in Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Island.
• The DHS "fails to detect instances of inappropriate EBT card usage."

As a result of the audit, which can be viewed in its entirety here, the Auditor General has offered several recommendations pertaining to the benefits provided to deceased residents, including improving procedures on timely notifications of benefit holders' deaths, as well as encouraging recipients and their families to immediately report a death.

Regarding out-of-state usage of benefits, the audit says, "recipients may have legitimate reasons for using the EBT cards out-of-state, including employment and family obligations, but we question the sheer volume of transactions."

Each year, spending activity was detected in every state, including exotic and faraway places. For example, nearly $100,000 in welfare benefits between 2013 and 2015 were spent in Hawaii. During that same three-year period, benefit holders also spent more than $190,000 in Caribbean locations like the Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico, the audit shows.

"The frequency of out-of-state transactions over this three-year period remains a significant concern," the audit says.

The audit also offers several recommendations to curb excessive out-of-state spending, including having more of the transactions flagged by software and revising methodology for determining recipient cases to review.

Click here to view the full audit.

Patch file photo