The police having arrested a woman who falsely claimed to be a victim of Hurricane Katrina

Nicholas Confessore:

The woman, Donna Fenton, 37, was charged by Brooklyn prosecutors with several counts of welfare fraud and grand larceny, the latest additions to a long record of fraud, arrests and legal disputes stretching from Mississippi to New York.

Ms. Fenton was the subject of an article in The New York Times on March 8, more than a month after Brooklyn prosecutors, prompted by suspicious officials at the city's welfare agency, began investigating her.

That article described what Ms. Fenton said were her efforts to re-establish her family in New York after fleeing from Biloxi, Miss., in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In the article, Ms. Fenton, who said she had attended high school in New York, described what she said were her efforts to obtain rent assistance and emergency cash aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, other government agencies and several charities.

The article was based on interviews with Ms. Fenton, caseworkers with the Salvation Army, employees of the Ramada Plaza Hotel in Queens, where Ms. Fenton lives, and Amanda McGee, who described herself as the fiancée of Ms. Fenton's oldest son. Ms. Fenton said that she lived at the hotel with her five children, and that her husband had come with her from Biloxi but was living elsewhere in New York.

The Times did not verify many aspects of Ms. Fenton's claims, never interviewed her children, and did not confirm the identity of the man she described as her husband. [Editors' Note Appended]

Over the last two weeks, prosecutors have shed some light on what they say is the true version of Ms. Fenton's life: She had never lived in Biloxi, and had registered for public assistance at a Brooklyn address last July; none of the four children she claimed as dependents actually live with her; and she was arrested in Queens after trying to cash an expired and altered check, even as she pleaded for more aid from FEMA. On the day Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, they said, someone used Ms. Fenton's New York State welfare benefits card in Brooklyn.

Ms. Fenton was formally charged with filing false documentation with the city's welfare agency and illegally obtaining thousands of dollars in benefits from that agency as well as from FEMA.

"She was expert at spinning a web of deceit, layers upon layers, that we've only just begun to untangle," said Lauren Mack, chief of the public assistance crimes unit of the Brooklyn district attorney's office. "It's a shame she's capitalizing on a tragedy that has made so many people homeless and so many people really in need of this aid."

Another Bad Slip for 'NY Times': Katrina Victim Unmasked

Rats! Another Hoax