Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program

Widespread fraud found in utility program for poor, By Nathan Hurst, July 2, 2010, Detroit News: “More than $116 million was wasted in fraud and improper payments to people in seven states — including Michigan — who faked information on applications for a federal program created to help poor families pay for heating their homes, a Government Accountability Office report shows. In the worst cases, applicants using the Social Security numbers of dead people were given up to $1,100 each. Others received benefits while they were in prison, living in mansions, driving luxury cars or making well over the maximum income allowed by the program. All told, $5 billion was spent by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program in 2009, and GAO investigators found 9 percent of cases in seven states — Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Virginia — involved fraud. Those states distributed roughly one-third of the federal heating assistance dollars in 2009. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she was ‘very disturbed’ by the report…”