(The Center Square) – In the past 5 years, the state of Illinois has found more than 1,000 instances of taxpayer funded overpayments to child care providers.
In a response to a public records request by TCS, the Illinois Department of Human Services said there were 1,004 instances of overpayments to providers and families for child care funding. However, the agency said it couldn’t immediately say which were fraud and which were not, as it would take them 167 hours to go through the thousand case files.
“While reviewing the overpayment file, IDHS-[Divison of Early Chilhood] staff and/or Child Care Resource and Referral agencies may note concerns about intentional program violation or fraud in the case notes or on the overpayment referral form; however, there is no method to independently track which overpayments are intentional or unintentional in CCMS,” said Sean Reddington, associate general counsel of IDHS.
A narrow request for fiscal year 2025 information is pending.
In their response to the initial public records request made Jan. 2, the agency did note founded fraud cases are reported to the Illinois Department of Health and Family Services Office of Inspector General.
“Specifically, [the agency] refers allegations to [HFS-OIG] when they [are] unable to determine if a program violation is intentional without further investigation,” Reddington said in an email. “In these cases, HFS-OIG is responsible for investigating the childcare benefit fraud referral and determining whether the allegation of fraud is substantiated or unsubstantiated.”
The HFS Inspector General annual report for fiscal year 2025 show three substantiated provider cases and two substantiated beneficiary cases, some referred to law enforcement.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul was asked what he does with such cases.
“Prosecute them, and we work with the OIG, we work with the inspector general from the federal government, [U.S. Health and Human Services],” Raoul told TCS when asked at an unrelated event Tuesday. “And so when the case is referred to us and we have the capacity to prosecute it, we prosecute. Some of the cases may go to the federal government, for prosecution or other prosecutorial agencies. But prosecute them.”
The IG report for fiscal 2025 shows when including Medicaid overpayments, the estimated provider overpayments was $55.7 million. When combining child care program cases with SNAP overpayments, the IG says the established client overpayments totals nearly $317,000.
Jim Talamonti contributed to this story.
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