Ironically the welfare queen bullshit was based off one very specific person, a career conwoman who was suspected for murder at the time she was mentioned as a part of insurance fraud. The implications was that welfare fraud was severe and she was just the top most fraudster, meaning the scale went down from the 150K fraud she did with lesser amounts all the way down.

Truth is, there was just her. Welfare fraud was so rare and NEVER even CLOSE to her level that they were negligible. But it didn't matter to them. Also the actual proven amount of fraud was 4k to 8k at the most. A fraction of the amount the government claimed. This would have been closer to 20 to 40k in today's money. Not petty theft, but far from some grand world shattering scheme.

BTW the overt scrutiny of her welfare fraud was so severe that a major reason why many of the investigations regarding her role in that murder were dropped because it would take away media attention from her fraud and reveal just what a career criminal she was.