Aid Fraud Crackdown Widened : Welfare: Orange County approves $1.3 million to fingerprint recipients and check them in computer shared with L.A. County.

In an effort to stop people from registering more than once for General Relief, the Orange County Board of Supervisors agreed Tuesday to spend $1.3 million on a program to fingerprint aid applicants.

The move is expected to save an estimated $64,000 over 4 1/2 years--with possible expansion and greater savings down the road, county officials said.

“We have no choice,” said Angelo Doti, director of financial assistance in the county Department of Social Services. “I think this is the forerunner of what will sweep the nation for public assistance.”

Starting in mid-September or October, people applying for General Relief in Orange County and those already on the rolls will be fingerprinted. Their prints will be run through a computer system shared with Los Angeles County to check that they are not already receiving aid in either county.

The fingerprinting would apply only to the 3,600 single adults on General Relief in Orange County. But the concept probably will be expanded to other aid recipients, including the nearly 40,000 parents of children on welfare, Doti said.

In April, Los Angeles County, which has been fingerprinting General Relief recipients for three years, started including adult recipients in the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program as part of a state demonstration project.

The key to the new program’s success will be its link with the existing program in Los Angeles County, said Arnold Winkle, Orange County’s administrative manager of information systems. He estimated that 60% of the savings will come from catching Los Angeles County residents who illegally apply for general assistance using false identification.

The Los Angeles County program, run by Electronic Data Systems Corp, has saved about $2 million since June, 1991, said Lisa Nunez, chief of the computer services division of the county Public Social Services Department.