PAIV was founded on October 3, 1990 by a local agency Fraud Investigator as a grass roots attempt to improve the state’s program integrity efforts and to increase the professionalism of Virginian’s investigative staff. A small group of investigators met in Richmond to unite the Regional Fraud Committees into a statewide group for the purpose of making the State Department of Social Services, the local agencies, the legislature, and the public aware of the problem of welfare fraud.
In the ensuing years, PAIV has worked diligently to put the fraud control function in the proper perspective and to integrate that function into the overall operation of DSS. We have always held as our mandate that controlling welfare fraud is an issue of program integrity and as such, should be treated as a departmental goal and function. In 1998, PAIV successfully petitioned the VA General Assembly to make fraud investigation a mandated program and the State Board of Social Services was charged with the responsibility of designing the operational guidelines to accomplish that purpose. DSS, under the insightful leadership of Commissioner Clarence Carter, responded by establishing a Office of the Inspector General, by significantly increasing the Central Office fraud staff and expanding their function, and by contracting with VISSTA to provide much needed training opportunities for new and existing fraud investigative staff.