Six women charged in food stamp fraud scheme

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) -- The director of Fort Wayne's federal housing program and five other women have been charged in an alleged welfare fraud scheme.

Betty L. Anderson faces felony theft and misdemeanor welfare fraud charges. The 61-year-old is the head of Fort Wayne's Housing Choice Voucher Program.

The head of the city's housing authority, Maynard Scales, told NewsChannel 15 Tuesday that he had not spoken to Anderson since he heard the news, but said she remained on his staff and said he expected her to return to work later this week.

"We will do an internal investigation," said Maynard Scales, the executive director at the housing authority.  "Not so much because we think some of our funds may or may not be involved, I don't think that is the case at all.  We have no reason to believe that, but what we want to say is, is this outside incident in anyway going to involve the housing authority in any tangential kind of way.  Our reputation?  Our ethics?  Our creditability from the community?  We're concerned about that more than we are that there's some at-risk funds.  That's not the case."

Scales said he is confident Anderson never misused any housing authority money because she does not have access to those accounts.

"We believe a person is innocent until proven guilty in this country," he said.  "And that's the premise I'm going to go forward on."

Scales said Anderson has worked at FWHA for 30 years.  The two have worked together for the past 15 years.

Court documents say state officials in July erroneously placed $3,500 in food stamp benefits on a woman's electronic benefit card, or 10 times the intended amount.  The error took place during a brief power outage.

A state agency asked the woman, Dana Freeman, 22, to come to a local office to have the extra credit removed but she allegedly never arrived.

Freeman is facing felony theft and corrupt business influence charges.

Prosecutors say that woman instead allowed five other women, including Anderson, to use the card at grocery stores where they spent more than $2,200.

According to court documents, the Electronic Benefit Card (EBT) transaction log from the Division of Family Resources (DFR), which shows the amount of Food Stamps issued to Freeman, match security video where the Food Stamps were used.

The alleged transactions took place between July 12 and September 1 of 2012.