Task force doing good job of fighting fraud

Regarding the Aug. 12 article, “The high cost of food aid fraud”:

I applaud efforts by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to further reduce the already low 1 percent fraud rate in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps).

The recent spate of articles on food aid fraud may lead readers to assume that food stamps are an unusually wasteful program or that low-income recipients are more likely to attempt fraud.

But the 1 percent fraud rate means that 99 cents of each benefit dollar is properly delivered to eligible participants and is spent on authorized food products, making this a cost-efficient and effective way to combat hunger and malnutrition.

In 2009, President Obama established the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force to prosecute all types of fraud. Last year the task force reported recovering $5.6 billion in criminal and civil fraud proceeds on behalf of taxpayers, the largest annual amount ever recovered by the Department of Justice, and more than twice the amount recovered in 2008.

The Task Force website, www.stopfraud.gov, shows the wide range of perpetrators and the variety of targeted programs, including the recovery of $900 million from eight drug companies that inflated drug prices on Medicare claims, and the recovery of $15 million from a Texas-based company that defrauded the Department of Defense on a food contract.

While striving to reduce fraud in the food stamp program to zero, it is good that the government is also reducing the greater fraud perpetrated by the well-to-do.

Ellen Fisher

Cedar Rapids