Woman Pleads Guilty to Welfare Fraud : Courts: Teresa Towns used seven identities to claim $163,000 in what may be the biggest such scam in the county.

A Burbank woman Monday pleaded guilty to grand theft for taking more than $163,000 under seven identities in what prosecutors said may be the largest welfare fraud in county history.

Teresa Towns, 28, used a series of aliases and fake documents to bilk the county out of food stamps and welfare checks, prosecutors said. She is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 14 on one count of grand theft.

Investigators said she had homes in Las Vegas and Burbank and flew back and forth between the two cities, receiving welfare payments in both.

The $163,000 figure does not include the money she allegedly received in Nevada, for which she is not being prosecuted, authorities said. The fraud was uncovered after she tried to use another name, Corrie Moorehead. She was originally charged under that name with 13 counts of welfare fraud.

None of the money she illegally received has been recovered and investigators said they do not know what happened to it. Property searches showed that she owned no real estate or cars under any of her aliases, and investigators said there is no evidence that the money was used to buy drugs or gamble.

Investigators who unraveled the seven-year scam said the woman always gave phony addresses, never applied for aid at the same welfare office twice and kept a “drop pad” in Burbank--an apartment unlived-in but used as an address to which the government checks were mailed.

The case was discovered Dec. 21, 1989, after a woman who identified herself as Corrie Mae Moorehead applied for benefits from the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program at a county Department of Public Social Services office in Panorama City, court records show.

The information provided by Moorehead was entered into a case management computer. It showed that two other women named Corrie Moorehead, with different birth dates, addresses and names and numbers of children, were receiving welfare benefits out of DPSS offices in Glendale and Pasadena.

The district attorney’s welfare fraud unit said that from interviews with caseworkers assigned to the three Mooreheads and copies of driver’s licenses that the applicants had submitted at each office, it was determined that the three Corrie Mooreheads were the same.

Investigators tracked the woman to a low-income neighborhood in North Las Vegas, where she was living with six of her eight children. She was moved Nov. 19 from Nevada to Los Angeles, officials said. She admitted that she learned from other welfare recipients how to get false identification and conduct the welfare scam, investigators said.