Here you go Rat, a debunking of your debunkin, so it is really not a myth, from the hallowed bible of the left NYT.
Big Spender Is Charged With Fraud On Welfare - New York Times
His life style was dazzling: a $4,000-a-month apartment on the 37th floor of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, a small fleet of luxury cars, membership in a health and racquet club, chief executive of his own business. Just last Monday he was negotiating to buy a $5 million English manor house on Long Island Sound.
But yesterday, as 63-year-old Herbert Steed walked out of his polished brass-and-marble lobby, past the rosewood table with a vase of lovely autumn flowers and the doormen in livery and white gloves, detectives were waiting under the canopy to burst the bubble and arrest him -- on welfare-fraud charges.
Since March, in what authorities called one of the most stunning welfare deceptions on record, Mr. Steed was said to have illegally collected $176 every two weeks in home-relief benefits, claiming that he was living at a little flat in Springfield Gardens, Queens, and had no assets and no job or income.
What Mr. Steed failed to mention, investigators and prosecutors said, was his tour-operator business and the $800,000 he was accused of taking from 225 Ghanaians for a trip to the World Cup games that he did not provide; or the $27,000 he paid in advance for a six-month lease on his tower apartment; or the Lincoln Continental, the Cadillac and the Lexus, or his prospective new home in Rye.
"The $3,000 in welfare payments he collected just about covered his health club dues," the Manhattan District Attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said in an interview. "We've seen some wild ones, but for sheer brass, for chutzpah, this has to be right up there at the top."
The suspect was tripped up, Mr. Morgenthau said, when authorities arrested him on charges of bilking the Ghanaian tour group -- and found a welfare identity card in his possession. The cards are used by welfare recipients to prove their identity and collect benefits at check-cashing and other authorized outlets, since welfare checks are no longer mailed out by the state.
Mr. Steed, who was described by investigators and prosecutors as a scam artist with a record of convictions for theft and fraud in state and Federal courts, was arraigned in Criminal Court yesterday on charges of grand larceny and filing false information with welfare authorities. The charges are felonies punishable by up to four years in prison on each count.
Acting Justice Herbert J. Adlerberg of State Supreme Court in Manhattan ordered Mr. Steed held without bail for a hearing on Oct. 21 after prosecutors argued that they believed he was still hiding $700,000 from the Ghanaian deal, and that he had jumped bail after a 1984 Federal mail-fraud conviction and disappeared for nine years until being found and extradicted from Europe last year.
Beyond the allegations against him and statements by investigators and prosecutors on his purported wheelings and dealings over the years, little was known yesterday about Mr. Steed, who chose not to appear at the bail hearing. Susan Lask, a lawyer who represented him, did not return a telephone message.
It was unclear, for example, why a suspect engaged in million-dollar deals and with hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets would have bothered to collect $176 in welfare every two weeks. Mr. Morgenthau said it seemed to be a matter of habit, not need. "He was willing to rip off people with money and he was willing to rip off people without money," the prosecutor said.
Richard Finkelstein, director of the bureau of fraud investigations in the city's Department of Human Resources, said there were 1.1 million welfare recipients in New York City -- 144,000 new cases last year alone -- and that 20,000 investigations in the last year had prevented 6,000 bogus claims and led to the arrest of more than 300 people on fraud charges.
Most cases of welfare fraud involve the filing of false information by the prospective recipient. Last August, a woman who collected welfare under 15 different names and for 73 fictitious children pleaded guilty to charges that she had illegally collected $450,000 from 1987 to 1994.
In many cases, computers are being used to ferret out recipients who are illegally collecting welfare payments in more than one state. Recently, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Vermont have agreed to compare data to search for fraud.
And the administration of Gov. Mario M. Cuomo last summer agreed to let New York City and some suburban counties take electronic fingerprints from some welfare recipients in an effort to fight fraud in which applicants use assumed names to collect benefits in more than one place. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has strongly favored finger imaging and said a system would be set up next year.
Mr. Morgenthau, who also favors the fingerprinting process, said Mr. Steed filed for home-relief benefits last March, saying he lived in Queens and had no employment or income. He reaffirmed these assertions to the Human Resources Administration last month when he was routinely recertified for benefits.
"In fact," Mr. Morgenthau charged, "the defendant was the chief executive officer of Gamair Tours Operator, Ltd., and had moved into the Trump Tower on July 1, 1994." He said investigators learned Mr. Steed, working out of an office at 122 East 42d Street that was little more than a mail drop and phone answering machine, had received $800,000 from the Ghanaian tour group on June 8.
"The defendant did not declare this income in his H.R.A. recertification paperwork and he did not inform H.R.A. of his Trump Tower address, thus receiving benefits to which he was not entitled," Mr. Morgenthau declared.
Besides acquiring his luxury cars and paying $27,000 in advance on a six-month lease for his one-bedroom apartment in the tower at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street, Mr. Steed took out a membership in the New York Health and Racquet Club, and began negotiations to buy an 11,000-square foot English manor house in Rye, with two swimming pools, a wine cellar and 935 feet of frontage on Long Island Sound.
It was unclear, investigators said, whether Mr. Steed actually intended to buy the house or had something else in mind. "He was trying to enter into a business with the owner," an assistant prosecutor, Sarah Mariani said. "It involved exporting cheesecake to Africa."
Ms. Mariani, chief of the prosecutor's welfare fraud unit, said Mr. Steed's record dated to 1958, when he was convicted of attempted grand larceny in New York City. In 1976, she said, he was convicted of criminal contempt in Nassau County, and in 1984 pleaded guilty in Federal Court in Manhattan to mail fraud in a scheme to steal $273,000 from the Hoover and Hertz companies and American Airlines.
Although his passport was seized in 1984, Mr. Steed jumped bail and fled the country, Ms. Mariani said. She said he lived in Africa and Europe until being found in Amsterdam and extradicted to the United States in February 1993. He then served a six-month term in a Federal prison in Michigan, she said.
The grand larceny charge involving the Ghanaians, for which Mr. Steed was arrested on Aug. 8, is still pending in Manhattan Criminal Court, Mr. Morgenthau said, adding that the case was taking time because of difficulties in getting witnesses from Ghana.
Detectives said Mr. Steed had an early morning workout at his health club yesterday and was arrested after returning home and changing into a business suit. Afterward, residents entering and leaving the tower said they did not know him, but two doormen did.
"He's 63?" said one. "He didn't look 63."
"He stayed in shape," said the other.
Sure it's a myth. I like the set of balls on the woman in yellow.