Woman Sentenced to Prison for $164,000 Welfare Fraud : Courts: Corrie Grayson is ordered to repay the money. She says she used it to support her family.

A Burbank woman was sentenced Tuesday to two years in prison and ordered to repay nearly $164,000 she took in what prosecutors say may be the largest welfare fraud in county history.

Corrie Mae Grayson, 29, had pleaded guilty to one count of grand theft in exchange for the prosecutors dropping six counts of welfare fraud and six counts of perjury. She faced a sentence of up to 49 years in prison if she had been convicted on all counts.

Although Grayson was ordered to repay the $163,797 she collected over seven years using seven aliases including Corrie Mae Moorehead, Deputy Public Defender Steven Schoenfield said Grayson does not face additional prison time if she can not pay back the money.

“She is very remorseful,” Schoenfield said.

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, according to court records.

While processing the application, county officials found that two other women with the same name were receiving benefits at welfare offices in Glendale and Pasadena. After talking with caseworkers assigned to the applicants, and checking driver’s licenses, it was determined that the three Corrie Mooreheads were the same person.

Investigators tracked the woman to a low-income neighborhood in North Las Vegas, where she was living with six of her eight children. She gave birth to a ninth child last month.

She was arrested Nov. 12, 1991, and returned to Los Angeles. She told authorities that she learned from other welfare recipients how to get false identifications and conduct the welfare scam.

Investigators said Grayson always gave phony addresses, never applied for aid at the same welfare office twice and kept a “drop pad”--an apartment only used as an address, where the government checks were mailed.

Unlike many other cases of welfare fraud in which phony applicants use the money for drugs or to support an upscale lifestyle, investigators said Grayson apparently was using the welfare payments and food stamps to support her family.

Investigators said that Grayson told them that she chose welfare fraud to support her family because it was safer than prostitution or drug dealing, the only other means of earning money that she felt were available to her.

Authorities said Grayson probably would have been eligible for benefits of $60,000 to $80,000 during the seven-year period if she had applied legally for them.