As documented in the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s Monday report, the state of Louisiana spent about $1.3 million on food stamps for deceased people from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2013.
Louisiana mistakenly gave state benefits to 3,938 deceased people during that four-year period, but the auditor only reviewed the records of single people who had died.
The auditor found that the state budgeted a total of $1.08 billion for food stamps for single people. $1.3 million of that budget actually went to deceased Louisianians. People who had been dead at least 4 months received the most, $556,259, of the fraudulent funds.
Louisiana permits food stamps to remained unused for up to a year, perhaps explaining why The Department of Children and Family Service did not recognize the wasteful error. (RELATED: Chicago Public School System Pushing Food Stamps)
Despite promising to better moderate death records in the future, the Department of Children and Family Services admitted that it likely will not be able to recover the $1.3 million in fraudulent funds.