Attorney General Jackley Announces New Unit to Fight Disability & Social Welfare Program Fraud
PIERRE, S.D. – Attorney General Marty Jackley announced today a Dedication Event to launch the South Dakota Cooperative Disability Investigations Unit (CDIU). The CDIU is a joint initiative involving the Social Security Administration, the Office of Inspector General, State Disability Determination Services (SD DDS), and state and local law enforcement agencies to prevent beneficiary fraud in disability programs administered by the federal Social Security Administration (SSA) as well as fraud related to other social welfare entitlement programs administered by the State of South Dakota.
“This special Unit will focus on scammers who take money away from those who legitimately file claims and depend on these much needed resources,” said Jackley. “This is a cooperative law enforcement effort to weed out fraud and to protect those in need of assistance.”
The press conference is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, September 27th at the Social Security Administration Offices located at 5021 S. Nevada Avenue, Sioux Falls, SD, beginning at 1:30 p.m. (CDT).
South Dakota will be one of 38 Units in 33 states to take part in the federal initiative, which began in 1998 to investigate questionable statements and activities on Social Security claimants, medical providers and other parties to prevent potential fraud in the federal/state administered programs.
The new program will be entirely funded by the Social Security Administration, which will pay for the salaries, benefits and vehicles for five South Dakota Attorney General employees to be part of the South Dakota CDIU. These positions will include four law enforcement officials and one intelligence analyst.
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I am glad that South Dakota is going to be a part of this. There are enough payments of entitlement dollars that are legitimate without the criminals who are stealing from you and me-the taxpayers-by filing fraudulent claims. I would encourage anyone who knows of someone stealing our money to report them; it is a crime against us and against our children since we are borrowing money all the time to fund the government. The thieves need to be brought into the light of day and prosecuted.
I would think we’d want more analysts and less cops. Analysts can scrub through the data and inform LEOs when they want to make an arrest. Are these new cops primarily going to be doing desk duty? I can’t imagine we don’t already have enough muscle to do the actual arresting.