Nadya Suleman, known also as the Octomom for having 8 babies conceived via IVF when she already couldn’t support her six existing children, has been charged with welfare fraud. Under investigation for months, she has been charged with defrauding the system by failing to report more than $30,000 in earnings.

Natalie Denise Suleman–her real name–was charged on January 6th with “one count of aid by misrepresentation and two counts of perjury by false application for aid.” She applied for public assistance in Lancaster, California in January 2013.

“While applying for public aid, the mother of 14 children allegedly failed to disclose that she was also getting checks for personal appearances and residuals from videos. She allegedly failed to report the extra income she earned between Jan. 1, 2013, and June 30, 2013,” a rep from the L.A. District Attorney’s Office said.

Suleman has been evicted from at least one home. In one it appeared she and her children lived in squalor. She has made pornographic videos for pay and she danced at a strip joint in Florida to earn money and as an attempt to cast herself into the limelight. Nadya Suleman believed that after giving birth to her eight babies she fast become a wanted personality with appearances on TV shows, talk shows and offers of endorsements for books and films. Very little of that ever panned out–leaving Suleman and her children to live less than comfortable lives.

Nadya Suleman will be arraigned in L.A. on Friday. If she is convicted for welfare fraud she faces a minimum of five years in jail. Some no doubt believe that might be a blessing in disguise for her fourteen children–to whom it seems she hasn’t been much of an upstanding maternal figure.

Do you think the Octomom deserves to go to jail? Might her children be better off if raised by people who truly want to be parents instead of “wannabe” celebrities?

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