Citing lax oversight, California Controller John Chiang said Monday the state paid $11 million to in-home caretakers to assist people who were dead.

The overpayments included $4.3 million to in-home providers in Los Angeles County.

"What the controller is doing is pointing out that there needs to be more state and county oversight of In-Home Supportive Services payments," said Garin Casaleggio, a spokesman for the State Controller's Office.

The report came on the heels of a vote by Los Angeles County supervisors to use technology to detect IHSS and other types of welfare fraud. In the last three years, the county's Department of Public Social Services has referred nearly 900 IHSS fraud cases to the state for investigation.

In 2007, the county's civil grand jury found scam artists were "embedded" in the department's IHSS program, which provides in-home care to the elderly and disabled.

"I suspect it's a big problem, but until we do more investigation and there is more energy and resources devoted towards investigation of this type of fraud, we really won't know how big it is," said Patrick Sequeira, assistant head deputy of the District Attorney's Office Welfare Fraud Division. "We think we are just scratching the tip of the iceberg."

The controller discovered the questionable payments by comparing the names and Social Security numbers of IHSS providers and recipients with those listed in the Social Security Administration Death Master File or the state Department of Public Health's Vital Statistics Death File.

The $3.7 billion state-sponsored program provides services such as housecleaning, meal preparation, shopping and personal care to keep eligible individuals in their homes instead of more expensive nursing homes or board-and-care facilities. In the past decade, the number of county residents receiving in-home care has doubled to 190,000, and officials say fraud in the $1.6 billion program has grown, too.

Provider timesheets are processed by each county and sent to the state Department of Social Services, which submits the claims to the State Controller's Office. The Controller's Office reviews the payments, runs the names of providers and recipients through death files and reports inconsistencies to social services, which forwards the information to counties for verification. The counties are responsible for following up on any questionable payments and recouping money spent inappropriately.

The survey found counties were slow to take action to stop payments or recoup overpayments even when evidence suggested the payments were fraudulent.