Authorities Monitor Social Media For Florida Food Stamp Fraud
ORLANDO, Florida -- At dual press
conferences held today in Tallahassee and Orlando, Department of
Children and Families (DCF) Secretary David Wilkins and Deputy Secretary
Suzanne Vitale rolled out the department’s new public
assistance fraud fighting initiatives.
Florida is the first state in the
nation to implement aggressive front-end fraud prevention technology to
ensure benefits go to Floridians who are in need.
Earlier this year,
DCF was granted a waiver from the federal government to implement
first-of-its-kind technology to ensure that individuals applying for
public assistance benefits online are who they say they are. More than
90 percent of the five million annual benefits applications are received
online through the DCF ACCESS system. The new technology is currently
being piloted in the Central Florida area. The pilot began in March and DCF claims that it has
demonstrated three times the fraud prevention value anticipated.
“Florida ranks
number one in the nation for identity theft, and for far too long
criminals have been gaming our systems and stealing from taxpayers and
Floridians who are truly in need,” Secretary David Wilkins said.
“Implementing technology that has been successfully used in the private
sector will allow us to catch more of these cheats on the front-end
while we continue to utilize modern investigative strategies to fight
fraud in Florida’s public assistance programs.”
In addition to the
customer authentication technology, DCF is streamlining fraud reporting
to law enforcement agencies, monitoring social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and issuing
warnings regarding penalties for committing fraud, tracking replacement
card requests and using that data to assess potential fraudulent
activity, utilizing asset verification technology and enhancing data
matching with inmate and employment databases.
DCF will also be
working with the new EBT card vendor to implement innovative fraud
solutions which are on track to prevent an additional $4 million in
fraud this year. Through this effort, DCF also anticipates an increase
in fraud referrals to law enforcement for investigation, arrest and
prosecution.
In 2011, Secretary
Wilkins created the Office of Public Benefits Integrity, a team
dedicated to rooting out fraud in public assistance programs. In just a
little over two years, the office saved more than $135 million through
efforts to prevent public assistance fraud and collect benefit
overpayments.
