Eight Arrested in $425,000 Welfare Swindle; D.A. Lashes County Agency : Fraud: Woman allegedly worked with relatives and others to collect multiple checks over a 10-year period.

The name Gloria Walker was familiar to county welfare authorities.

A woman by that name had been paid welfare benefits on behalf of at least a dozen people--all with cases handled by the Exposition Park office of the county Department of Public Social Services.

Yet, until last year, nobody put it together that Gloria Walker, 45, was taking home a huge welfare income.

And on Thursday, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner announced that Walker had been arrested earlier in the day as the leader of a welfare fraud ring that cheated various government agencies out of $425,000 over 10 years.

Reiner lashed out at the county welfare agency, saying it suffered “a total lack of internal controls” that could have prevented much of the fraud.

Agency officials disagree. They say Walker worked in cahoots with about a dozen co-conspirators to collect the money. The group filed phony documentation with a variety of social service agencies for its claims. Walker was able to collect without arousing suspicions, in part because the law permits welfare agencies to send checks to a representative of the actual recipient.

In addition, Walker and her co-conspirators allegedly went to great lengths to prevent authorities from figuring out that the money was all going to the same person. They used phony Social Security numbers, doctors’ notices and rent receipts to conceal Walker’s true identity.

“If it had not been difficult to uncover, she wouldn’t have gotten away with this as long as she did,” said Lowquilla Grenier, who supervises the welfare agency’s fraud investigators that worked with the district attorney’s office on the case. “But the bottom line is, we caught her.”

Prosecutors allege that a dozen people, eight of whom are related to Walker, were involved in the scheme.

Arrested Thursday along with Walker were her husband, her mother, her daughter, three of her siblings and an unrelated friend. All eight were charged in a 138-count criminal complaint that alleges conspiracy, forgery, perjury, grand theft, insurance fraud, impersonation and making false financial statements.

Three others listed in the complaint live out of state. Authorities said the remaining defendant is a transient and considered a fugitive.

Walker, her husband, Charles, 46, and her 32-year-old sister, Angela Johnson, were working as licensed vocational nurses while they were claiming benefits.

Reiner said Johnson is still receiving welfare benefits from the agency, even though it was informed before her arrest that she was suspected of bilking the county of $47,000.

When informed, the agency merely responded by cutting the woman’s payments by 10% to make up for the money allegedly stolen, Reiner said. But, he said, when Johnson objected to the cutback and requested a hearing, her payments were restored in full.

County welfare officials said there is no law preventing a fraud suspect from receiving welfare assistance, but the district attorney said he is appalled that Johnson is still receiving money.

“This is not a sophisticated operation,” Reiner said. “You simply go in and demand money, and it is given to you. And if your check is cut because you have been caught stealing, you go back in and ask for another one and you get it.”

The alleged scheme began to unravel in February, 1990, when a hearing officer for the welfare agency discovered that one of the co-conspirators had significantly underreported her income and that her checks were being sent to Walker.