Section 20. The Fraud Reduction/Elimination Effort

A. In compliance with § 63.2-526 of the Code of Virginia, the department shall establish a statewide fraud prevention, detection and investigation program to be named the Fraud Reduction/Elimination Effort (FREE).

1. The department shall develop and implement policies and procedures for the FREE program.

2. The department shall provide a detailed local reimbursement procedure, on an annual basis, to assist in the formulation of the local department's FREE program operation plan. The department's procedure shall project the available funding and the number of local fraud investigators for each local department that the FREE program will support. The number of investigators shall be based on an evaluation of the available funding and appropriate criteria from one or more of the following: a local department's average TANF and Food Stamp caseload size, average number of monthly applications for food stamps and TANF, number of local department workers, geographic location, number of fraud investigations, program compliance, collections and performance expectations.

3. The department shall develop, implement and monitor local FREE units performance expectations.

B. Each local department shall aggressively pursue fraud prevention, detection and investigations.

1. Each local department shall conduct fraud prevention, detection and investigation activities consistent with the requirements of federal regulations, the Code of Virginia, the regulations contained herein and the department's FREE program policy.

2. Each local department shall submit to the department, for annual approval, a program operation plan, formatted by the department, which shall include a description of the local department's prevention, detection and investigative process, agreement with the Commonwealth's attorney, identification of staff charged with oversight or supervisory responsibility of the FREE program, performance expectation monitoring process, signed commitment to adhere to specified responsibilities identified in the Statement of Assurance section of the program operation plan, and, if requested, a proposed annual budget to include the identification of the FREE program investigators, their salary, fringe benefit amounts, supporting operating costs, hours worked per week and time dedicated to the FREE program.

3. Upon request, each local department shall provide the department with an accounting of FREE program expenditures.

C. Funding for the FREE program shall be comprised of balances in the Fraud Recovery Special Fund, general funds appropriated for this activity, and any federal funds available for this purpose.

1. In order to receive reimbursement of direct costs and supporting costs of operation, a local department must:

a. Comply with all pertinent law, regulation and policy;

b. In accordance with the law, each local department shall establish and maintain a FREE prevention, detection and investigation unit; and

c. Recover fraud and nonfraud related overpayments of designated federal assistance programs. Reimbursement to localities shall be made in accordance with the methodology for the allocation of funds to localities as developed by the work group convened by the commissioner, consisting of local department representatives and senior department managers. Each local department's level of reimbursement of direct and support operation costs is paid from available federal funds, general funds and state retained portion of collections.

2. Local departments may contract with other local departments to share a fraud prevention, detection and investigation unit and may contract with private entities to perform fraud investigations. Any private entity performing fraud investigations shall comply with the requirements of § 30-138 of the Code of Virginia and the restrictions of § 63.2-526 of the Code of Virginia.

Historical Notes

Derived from Volume 16, Issue 22, eff. August 16, 2000; amended, Virginia Register Volume 22, Issue 25, eff. October 1, 2006.

Statutory Authority

§§ 63.2-217 and 63.2-526 of the Code of Virginia.