A pair of Alameda County district attorneys who were in charge of welfare fraud prosecutions said their office practiced a form of “extortion” in these cases, leveraging the fear of criminal charges to collect money from suspects.
In an internal memo obtained by the Chronicle, the prosecutors said problems had arisen after the District Attorney’s Office, in 2021, assumed responsibility for probing public-assistance fraud allegations, a task previously handled by the county’s social services agency.
Now, special investigators employed by the office look for evidence of intentional deception by welfare recipients, and can submit cases to prosecutors for charging decisions. But the memo authors said the investigators ran afoul of California law by implicitly — and sometimes explicitly — threatening the possibility of charges, while at the same time urging interviewees to make repayments…