Linda Taylor, the Welfare Queen
Linda Taylor used considerable guile and deceit to con the government out of welfare checks and services, earning her the title of the “welfare queen”. She also practiced insurance fraud, outright theft, and has been linked to potential sale of children. In her lifetime she used more than 80 different names, many of them backed with identity documents; Linda Taylor, the name by which she is best known, was not her real name. She represented herself as being of ages varying from her twenties to her fifties, was “married” to several different men, some simultaneously, and claimed varying numbers of children.
Her real name was Martha Miller, born in Tennessee, and despite claiming different ethnicities at different times in her career as a fraudster she was born white, according to US census records. She used fraudulently obtained social security numbers to change her identity numerous times, through which she made several claims to be heiress to the estates of deceased persons in several states. She also obtained welfare claims through multiple states simultaneously using different names and social security numbers.
Taylor made several false claims of being the victim of robberies which allowed her to file insurance claims on property she never owned. It was one such case which led to her eventual exposure as a fraudster and con artist. In 1974 she reported to the Chicago police that she had been robbed of property and cash which amounted to more than $14,000. A suspicious detective recalled a similar case some time before and investigated her, discovering a warrant for her arrest on suspicion of welfare fraud in Michigan. Arrested in Chicago she was released on bail and fled the state.
She was located in Arizona that fall and returned to Illinois, where she was retained in custody while prosecutors prepared an indictment which originally charged her with using 80 different identities to defraud the welfare system in multiple states. She was also charged with perjury when testifying before a grand jury, bigamy, and the theft through fraud of over $100,000. By the time she went to trial the bigamy charges had been dropped and the amount stolen reduced to $8,000, through the legal maneuvering of her lawyers.
Taylor went to prison in 1978, but by 1983 she was released and living with her husband when he was shot and killed in what was ruled an accident by the coroner. She collected his life insurance and began living with the man who had shot him. When that man subsequently died she claimed to be his granddaughter and next of kin, despite their having been married in Florida in 1986. Taylor died in 2002 in Illinois. The full extent of her fraudulent activities is still being revealed sixteen years later.
