By Liz Gonzalez and Juan Flores
The anonymity of the Internet is allowing some people on public assistance to cheat their own children and you out of money, twice. Even if they're caught, there's not much the system can do to stop them.
Three-month-old Isaiah's big appetite comes with a big price tag. Each canister of formula runs about $25.
His mom, Maria Jimenez, says Isaiah goes through one every week and a half.
"It's crazy how much we spend on the milk. It's a lot," she says.
Jimenez and her husband earn too much to qualify for any help, but 1.4 million others get public assistance of some kind, and some are taking advantage of it.
We've been watching the postings on Craigslist for months and found people who admitted they are selling formula they received for free through WIC -- the Women, Infant and Children's program. That's right, they are making a profit off food that you as a taxpayer paid for.
You could say that stories like these have a lot of people fired up. KMPH News was in Sacramento and a woman came up to us. She works for the WIC program and says baby formula is just the tip of the iceberg. People have also been known to sell grape juice and cereal for a profit.
Al Lundeen is with the State Department of Public Health. The agency has eight investigators looking into fraud accusations statewide.
"It's a crime against the child. This program is designed to benefit that youngster, and if you're shortchanging the youngster in the amount of product -- given the food or the formula -- you're giving them less than what's estimated they need for nutritional balance," Lundeen says.
In some cases, the parents we contacted say they are selling surplus formula or baby cereal, but Lundeen says that should never be the case.
"There's a formula involved in determining how much product a child would need," he says.
With more than $827 million worth of food distributed in California every year, there's plenty of room for people to cheat the system. Sometimes, they get caught.
From March through the end of April, more than 200 people on WIC received warnings, but that's about it.
The Department of Public Health cannot fine people caught cheating the system, but it can send cases to law enforcement agencies.
Lundeen says, "We can take action that could deny them that benefit entirely, which defeats the purpose of the program, but it would overcome the abuse."
With formula sometimes listed as low as $10 a canister, parents like Jimenez says the temptation to buy online is great, but she says her conscience would keep her from doing it.
"It angers me because, okay, they have all this help for their baby when they turn around and sell it for profit instead of giving it to their babies. I don't understand. I don't get that. What are they feeding their infant?" says Jimenez.
Instead, she says she'll keep clipping coupons.
Lundeen says less than one percent of recipients have been found to cheat the system so he says it still works. This type of fraud is not impossible to track.
Some of the people who post online leave phone numbers which is how we found some of the people who admitted they were on WIC.
