
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 3, 1994                   TAG: 9402030069
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

FOOD PROGRAMS LOSE $1 BILLION YEARLY TO THEFT

From thieving postal workers to unscrupulous store owners, criminals skim more than $1 billion a year from federal programs to feed the poor, a Senate panel was told Wednesday.

The criminals also steal public support from the food stamp system and from the special nutrition program for pregnant or nursing women and their young children, witnesses told the Senate Agriculture Committee.

The committee has begun to examine several proposals to combat fraud in a system that distributes more than $27 billion in benefits in the form of coupons that are easily stolen or illegally traded for cash.

The committee also is looking at its own and administration proposals to supply benefits electronically through cards like those used to get cash from teller machines.

"The misdeeds of a few have cast a long shadow over millions of honest, yet struggling, low-income families and threaten to erode public support for the food stamp program," said Ellen Haas, assistant secretary of Agriculture for Food and Nutrition Services.

Haas oversees the food stamp program, which supplies $24 billion worth of benefits each year to about 27 million people, many of them young children.

The program received its most recent black eye when traffickers - people who illegally sell food stamps - obtained some of the more than $100 million in supplemental food stamps for California earthquake victims.

The department also runs WIC, the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program.

The administration wants to expand that program, which provides $3.2 billion in benefits to about 4 million people.

But at Wednesday's hearing, senators heard Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris describe an 18-month investigation into corruption in the WIC program in Chicago.

The investigation resulted in more than 30 indictments. Agents found stores that paid cash for the WIC vouchers and county health employees who approved unqualified applicants in exchange for a share of the vouchers.

Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., introduced a bill Tuesday to crack down on stores by disqualifying violators from the program and allowing the government to seize their property.

The senators also saw videotapes of postal clerks pocketing envelopes of food stamps.

by CNB