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It is shocking, though not surprising, that two county Social Services Department employees have been charged in the theft of money from the people they were supposed to be helping.
Amounts weren't disclosed during a news conference last week, nor was the name of a second person allegedly involved in the alleged theft, but we've seen enough thefts of public money in the past to know that where there are large sums of money being passed around someone will eventually try to take some for themselves. We've been through this a time or two over the past couple of decades.
That propensity is exactly what makes the Program Integrity Unit necessary – though we didn't realize until Wednesday just how necessary until something County Executive PJ Wendel said during the news conference announcing charges against Amber Tibbetts and an unnamed county employee. Wendel said the Program Integrity Unit has been used many times over the last five years, mostly to arrest individuals who steal other individuals’ benefits. Wednesday's charges are one of the first times it has been used to arrest a county employee – though we note Wendel and Carmelo Hernandez, county social services director, didn't say it's the first time, either.
The fact there is attempted fraud isn't surprising. The amount, however, makes our hair stand up like the Bride of Frankenstein. We couldn't believe what we heard when Wendel said the county's Program Integrity Unit has discovered $7.4 million worth of fraud cases. That means there is an average of $102,777 in public money being stolen every month in Chautauqua County or roughly $3,389 a day over the past six years.
Wendel asked Wednesday for county residents not to lose faith in the system. That's easier to do when you're talking about an isolated incident like two employees defrauding clients. It's a taller task to have faith in a welfare system that, it turns out, is being bilked out of almost $4,000 a day – and that's the fraud that we actually know about.
Criminal charges against two county employees is indeed shocking, but it's shocking to the level of sticking your tongue onto a 9-volt battery when you were a kid. Hearing there has been $7.4 million worth of theft and fraud is shocking to the level of grabbing ahold of a live power wire.
What turns our hair white is knowing there is a good chance there is more fraud out there that we haven't yet discovered.