update on welfare fraud

Well, after a lot of thought and discussion, we turned our information over to the appropriate authority.  It came down to family.  Our family.  What we can live with knowing and what we can't.  What kind of an example we want to set for our children.  While we have no plans to disclose this to our children now, maybe some day when they're older, we will use it to teach them a lesson about actions and consequences.  It also made us realize that maybe if my MIL's family was more important to her, she wouldn't have put any of us in this situation. 

We were never asked our identity or our relationship to the persons we were reporting.  We reported both his mother and the sibling she was working with to hide the money.  I don't know if anything will come of it, but at least we can sleep at night.  It was probably one of the hardest decisions we've had to make in our 15+ years of marriage. 

For those of you working so hard to make ends meet, I apologize if my indecisiveness to report seemed offensive.  For those of you who felt family comes first, I hope you can understand that I did put my family first in this decision.  For the ones who stated it was a crime not to report it, that's not correct.  I did a little research and "misprison" now requires the act of helping to conceal it, which we clearly were not. 

Night all -- I'm off for the best night's sleep I've had since this all came to light.