Recently evicted woman charged after seeking Katrina funds

But Emma Hill, 31, said she was desperate for help after she and her four children were evicted from their South Memphis home Sept. 8 and went to a nearby Red Cross shelter.

“I just went to the shelter to get some help,” she said Tuesday from her cousin’s home. Hill said she told a volunteer at the shelter that she was from Memphis and described her predicament, and they offered help regardless.

“She told me she understood what it was like to be a mama, and you need your kids in their own home.”

After three days of being homeless and with her children in tow, Hill said she didn’t realize that volunteers believed she was a Katrina evacuee when they helped her fill out forms for aid.

“I (was) in no frame of mind to try to run a scam,” she said.

But police said she told volunteers that she was an evacuee of Gulfport, Miss., where her home was damaged by the hurricane. The next day she returned to the shelter to pick up a $1,565 relief check when she was arrested.

Mid-South Red Cross CEO William Hilderbrandt said that the organization only helps victims of disasters and would have referred Hill to another agency for assistance.

Memphis, through which thousands of Katrina evacuees have passed, has seen several attempts at fraud for Katrina relief.

Police arrested a homeless Memphis man on Sept. 12 who used a New Orleans address to apply for $2,000 in disaster assistance. An Alabama man tried the same scam that day.

A New Orleans husband and wife were arrested Sept. 11 for posing as cousins to get $3,315, double the amount a couple would get.

“Unfortunately there are going to be a percentage who are going to be unscrupulous,” Hilderbrandt said.

Two officers from the Memphis Police Economic Crimes Bureau have been assigned to investigate hurricane fraud cases.