By Brian Ojanpa
ST PETER — Dean Cowdin knows how to lurk in the dark, how to use different vehicles to stay covert, how to spot fibs from a person’s body language.
He’s been investigating welfare fraud 13 years for Nicollet County, so trying to snow-job him is like trying to sneak the sun past a rooster.
Speaking of 6 a.m. tales ...
There was the time he hunkered down outside a house at that hour for two or three days trying to espy a guy leaving for work.
Nothing.
Then he learned the man actually would leave for work at 3 a.m.
Bingo. The co-habiting gent was outed, and the welfare-recipient woman he was living with ran afoul of the law for not reporting his income.
Cowdin also has ferreted out people hiding in homes and those who otherwise tried to bilk their way to public-assistance money.
He said he can empathize with the plight of people who are hard up, but not with the subterfuges used to play the system.
“Desperate people can do desperate things, but that doesn’t make it right.”
Cowdin, a retired Mankato police officer, stresses that although exposing welfare cheating is his job, his focus is more on prevention than punitive action.
For example, if he determines that a second income in a welfare client’s home is going unreported, he’ll tell the parties to promptly do so to keep everything kosher.
Sometimes, though, civility takes a hike when someone is confronted by an investigator.
“People will yell at me — ‘Get out of the house.’ I’ll say, ‘Fine. I’ll see you in court.’”
But in 13 years, Cowdin said never once has he had to testify in court because the cases were settled before it got to that stage.
Gauging the extent of welfare fraud can be nettlesome. It’s definitely out there, but attaching a weight to it in relation to the overall state budget has tended to fall along the lines of partisan debate.
GOP legislators such as Marty Seifert contend the scope of the problem dictates that massive welfare reform is in order.
DFLers say welfare benefits amount to a small fraction of the state’s budget and that dwelling on abuses represents short-term thinking.
The complexity of welfare rules and regulations makes them havens for gray areas, and detecting whether a welfare recipient is hiding income can be particularly difficult. It’s a problem not unlike tax issues perpetually faced by the Internal Revenue Service.
Meantime, the demand for public assistance is proliferating as more people become jobless in a recessionary economy.
Nicollet County Social Services Financial Supervisor Dawn Michels said the county’s 10 financial workers have been dealing with an upsurge in applications.
“Years ago you could bet when it would be the busiest. But now it’s every single month. They’re being bombarded,” Michels said.
All of which suggests that Cowdin will have little difficulty filling his 20-hour work weeks — and maintaining a wry perspective on the foibles of people out to finesse the system.
“Funny how some people can ‘forget’ they got married,” he said.
Reporting welfare fraud
People who give false information or withhold facts to receive cash, food support, child care or health care in Minnesota may be guilty of fraud.
People may wish to report those receiving public assistance who:
• Do not report income
• Incorrectly report people living in the home
• Misuse food support benefits or electronic benefit cards
• Falsify information on an application
• Do not report property and assets
• Receive benefits from more than one state at the same time
• Lie about where they live
The state’s 24-hour welfare fraud hotline number is 1-800-627-9977.
