Food Assistance

This report examines fraud and abuse in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). GAO collected information from the Agriculture Department's (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service and from state and local WIC agencies on the extent of fraud and abuse in the program. GAO found that USDA lacks recent estimates on the overall levels of vendor, participant, or employee fraud and abuse occurring in the WIC program. USDA does have information on fraud and abuse detected by state agencies. However, that information does not present a complete picture of fraud and abuse in the WIC program because the level of detection efforts differ among both state and local agencies.

GAO noted that: (1) USDA has no recent estimates on the overall levels of vendor, participant, or employee fraud and abuse occurring in the WIC program; (2) the Department has some information on that portion of fraud and abuse detected by state agencies; (3) in estimating the extent of WIC fraud and abuse, USDA has relied on two studies, completed in 1988 and 1991, that provide information on some types of vendor and participant fraud and abuse; (4) USDA is updating these two studies and expects to have this information late in 2000 for vendors and late in 1999 for participants; (5) regarding fraud and abuse that has been detected, USDA collects information on an annual basis from state WIC agencies on vendors but not on participants or employees; (6) while this information is limited, it is valuable because it helps USDA monitor states' efforts to detect vendor fraud and abuse; (7) at the state and local levels, according to GAO's survey, agencies reported detecting higher levels of vendor fraud than of participant and employee fraud; (8) the number of vendors identified as committing fraud or abuse in a 2-year period--October 1, 1996, through September 30, 1998--represents about 9 percent of all vendors in the WIC program as of September 30, 1998; (9) in comparison, the number of participants identified as committing fraud or abuse of a serious nature during this 2-year period represented an estimated .14 percent of the average monthly number of participants in fiscal year 1998; (10) very little employee fraud or abuse was reported; (11) WIC agencies use a variety of strategies to prevent and detect vendor, participant, and employee fraud and abuse; (12) regarding vendors, states differ in the management procedures they use to control fraud and abuse, including the methods they use to limit the number of vendors they authorize to participate in WIC and the amount and type of vendor monitoring they perform; (13) with respect to participants, state and local agencies use a variety of strategies, ranging from educating participants on program rules and regulations to using a computer system to verify that a participant is eligible on the basis of participation in another program; (14) agency officials identified several barriers to preventing and detecting fraud and abuse; and (15) these barriers include a lack of: (a) federal criteria to evaluate whether a state has authorized an appropriate number of vendors given the resources available to manage vendors; (b) information on participant fraud and abuse being detected; and (c) policies or procedures regarding potential employee conflict-of-interest situations.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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