6 Charged in $70,000 Welfare Fraud Case

Six family members who arrived in San Diego about two years ago from Louisiana were charged Friday by the district attorney’s office with defrauding the county Department of Social Services of more than $70,000 in welfare benefits over 13 months.

Investigators say the case represents the largest single ring of suspects ever charged in such a fraud case.

Two of the defendants were arraigned on a variety of felony charges before San Diego Municipal Judge Lillian Lim Quon and held in custody on $10,000 bail each. The two, Daniel Lee, 46, and his wife, Virginia Lee, 41, each pleaded not guilty.

Two other suspects, Glenda Lee, said to be Daniel and Virginia Lee’s daughter, and William White, described as Glenda Lee’s common-law husband, were in custody in County Jail and expected to be arraigned Monday.

Other Suspects

Two other suspects were at large Friday and believed to be out of state. Arrest warrants were ordered for the two, Cora Lee and Theresa Remble. Their exact relationships to the Lee family were unclear.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Laura Tanney said five other members or associates of the family are part of the continuing investigation but have not been charged. She declined to comment on their roles in the alleged fraud, or whether they have assisted investigators.

Rohn Dillow, chief of the Department of Social Services’ special investigations section, characterized the ring’s operation as one of the most sophisticated ever encountered by the department.

Variety of Aliases

Members of the group went to five of the department’s eight welfare offices in the county from June, 1987, to July, 1988, and used a variety of aliases in requesting aid from MediCal, general county welfare relief, food stamps, Aid to Families with Dependent Children and AFDC for the homeless--even though the family owns property in Louisiana, according to investigators.

Among the schemes to receive welfare payments, investigators said, were declaring dependents when they had none by “swapping children” among one another and declaring them their own, claiming they were homeless when in fact they were living in the Golden Hill area of San Diego and applying for welfare several times by using aliases.

“They were quite sophisticated in terms of their ability, their knowledge of the system, their knowledge of the verification requirements for eligibility determination and in the information and documents they provided,” Dillow said.

“They knew what they were doing.”

But alert eligibility technicians first snagged individuals in the ring last June--about a year after the fraud allegedly started--because of some inconsistencies in their statements and documents. Fraud investigators within the department were notified, and they in turn notified eligibility workers throughout the system who began reviewing their cases, Dillow said.

“They came up with a number of people who seemed to be working the same way, who found commonality among names--even the aliases--and common birth dates,” Dillow said.

He said one or more members of the family could be expected to show up at any office on any day to make a request for welfare benefits, so fraud investigators were sent to all eight offices and put on standby until a suspect showed up.

Indeed, “the people would come in, and our fraud investigators were immediately called in to the interview and talked to these people,” Dillow said.

By December, he said, enough information was gathered to turn the case over to the district attorney’s office for prosecution.

Despite the investigation, members of the group still applied fraudulently for even more welfare benefits, Dillow said.

“They continued to apply for aid, even though they knew they were being investigated,” Dillow said.

Virginia Lee was believed to be personally responsible for receiving more than $20,000 in aid, Dillow said.