One of the ‘stupidest’ pieces of legislation to come out of Sacramento in years | Opinion

I was sitting in my basement office, minding my own business, when my wife, Jenn, came down the stairs to ask if I had bought her a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes. At that point in my life, I had never heard of Jimmy Choo, and I certainly did not know anything about his shoes.

Jenn was waving around a note from the manager of a San Francisco retailer thanking me for buying a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes. The look on my face convinced her that I did not buy her — nor anyone else — Jimmy Choo shoes. As Jenn walked back up the stairs, she told me that someone had stolen my identity and that I should do something about it. She was right.

Over the next week, I filed a police report and found that the identity thieves had fraudulently stolen just under $10,000 in my name from retailers in San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda and Contra Costa Counties.

Why just under $10,000? Because these identity thieves knew that they would not be prosecuted in these counties for amounts less than $10,000. They were able to walk away with just under $50,000, just from stealing my identity. They surely replicated this scheme many times with other victims.

Senate Bill 560, authored by Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, D-Los Angeles, is going to cause this exact same thing to happen with welfare fraud. It is one of the stupidest pieces of legislation to come out of Sacramento in years — the bill would basically allow welfare fraud up to $25,000.

If you watch the committee hearing, Smallwood-Cuevas would have you believe that the people prosecuted for welfare fraud were all Black, single mothers. Her ability to rationalize the theft of public funds is amazing.

Smallwood-Cuevas, under the banner of racial justice, will license welfare fraud of up to $24,999. And these fraudsters will do it repeatedly. While fraudsters may not be morally upstanding people, they are smart.

Even the bill sponsors, the Coalition of California Welfare Rights Organizations, argue that this bill is about the current practice of “criminalizing the inadvertent actions of families with children.” They also argue that this bill is justified because the people prosecuted for welfare fraud are overwhelmingly women and minorities.

Here is what Smallwood-Cuevas and SB 560’s sponsors get very wrong: They would have you believe that this welfare fraud happens because of some administrative error where an innocent person wakes up one morning with extra money in their bank account and then becomes a felon. That is not the case. Welfare fraud is a specific intent crime. As the California District Attorney’s Association pointed out, a prosecutor has to prove that the defendant intended to defraud the system.

Despite the effort of the Welfare Fraud Investigators Association and the Placer County District Attorney’s office, not even Republican Senator Rosilicie Ochoa-Bogh had the courage to vote against this horrible legislation.

This bill has absolutely nothing to do with the fact pattern mentioned by Smallwood-Cuevas. It is close to licensing fraudulent acts up to the magical number of $25,000. Maybe a majority of Democrats get the harm here, as the bill is currently stuck in the senate’s Appropriations Committee.

We saw what happened when we, as a state, gave a free pass to people stealing $950 from retail establishments. People stole just under $950 over and over again. It is as certain as the sun coming up in the morning that welfare fraud right up to $25,000 will occur regularly if SB 560 becomes law. We should make it harder, not easier, for California’s professional thieves, whether they steal from the welfare system or buy Jimmy Choo shoes with somebody else’s credit card.