By Gail Sullivan
The Washington Post
Nadya Suleman, better known as “Octomom,” pleaded guilty to welfare fraud in a Los Angeles court on Monday, according to a statement from the Los Angeles county district attorney’s office.
The 39-year-old mother of 14 who gave birth to octuplets in 2009 after fertility treatments, was sentenced to 200 hours of community service and two years of probation for failing to report income while on public assistance.
Suleman was getting money for personal appearances and videos but didn’t mention that when she applied for welfare in January, 2013. In all she failed to report $30,000 earned between January and June of last year, an oversight her lawyer blamed on poor record-keeping, Reuters reported.
Officials started investigating after they received an anonymous tip, the L.A. Times reported.
Suleman has since paid $9,805 to the California Department of Health Care Services for Medi-Cal overpayments and $16,481 to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services for aid.
The California single mom became famous when she became one of only two women in the U.S. to successfully give birth to octuplets. “Perhaps most saliently, in terms of public opinion, she is the first to have emerged from childbirth ready for the world’s cameras with what looks to most people like plastic surgery — facial modifications, it would seem, designed to approximate the visage of that other notably avid producer and acquirer of children, Angelina Jolie,” the New York Times noted in 2009.
Her decision to undergo fertility treatment so she could have the babies even though she didn’t have a job or partner to help her support them, drew public criticism. She was “cited as proof of everything that is wrong with American culture, single mothers, California and the welfare state. The controversy over whether she should be ‘punished’ reached such a pitch that as state legislators and bloggers worldwide clamored for public authorities to intervene, Suleman and her representatives received death threats,” the Times said.
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