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Notes -
One very simple one, because many illegals either work under the table or with a stolen identity: If you don't have any reported income you can still get welfare while having a job.
The amount of ways to do it are boundless though, that's just one of the more common ways.
Another variation is the kickback schemes to bribe someone to certify that you deserve the aid. So if the state has an inspector or certifying authority to sign off that you qualify, you give them part of the welfare to attest that you actually deserve it. So if the welfare check is 1000, you kick back X00 back to them so that you both profit.
This later form is easier to scale in an organized crime / corrupted institution way, such as with the recent Somali fraud ring in Minnesota. While the typical risk of scaling is a defection risk of someone wanting a bigger cut and bringing down the whole system, if you can use something like familial/social networks to coordinate, you can mitigate the defection risk and increase the scale of the corruption. All the more so if you can leverage political influence to deter local investigators.
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