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Malloy Investigating State Employees Who May Have Committed Fraud

Governor Dannel Malloy is investigating whether scores of people, including some state employees, defrauded the state when they received emergency aid after Tropical Storm Irene. As WNPR's Jeff Cohen reports, Malloy says state workers could be fired or arrested should the allegations prove true.

After Tropical Storm Irene hit, nearly 24,000 people were deemed eligible for the assistance.  There were only two hurdles -- you had to have have racked up disaster-related expenses, and your income had to be low. But according to Mark Pazniokas of the Connecticut Mirror, some people may have lied about their incomes in order to get the money.

"The way this works is there is an application and it is basically an affidavit that the applicant signs attesting to what is their monthly income.  You do not have to come in with your W-2 forms or your tax returns or anything like that."
 
Pazniokas says that a state review of the people who got the disaster aid raised a few questions.

"In reviewing the list of recipients, there was a name or names that jumped out.  It was somebody who apparently was a manger of some prominence whose income was generally known, that it was a six-figure income."

That led the state to eventually find that more than 800 of the 24,000 aid recipients were state workers.  Malloy said that many of those workers may have legitimately qualified for the program, but that more than a few may have committed fraud. He also said he notified state and federal prosecutors of the irregularities late last week.

Malloy's chief counsel has also alerted commissioners and department heads about what to do should they have an employee suspected of fraud. 

The governor made the announcement during a rare Sunday press conference before he left the state for a two-day conference of the Democratic Governors Association in Beverly Hills.
 
 

Jeff Cohen started in newspapers in 2001 and joined Connecticut Public in 2010, where he worked as a reporter and fill-in host. In 2017, he was named news director. Then, in 2022, he became a senior enterprise reporter.

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