BATON ROUGE — Winnsboro Mayor Alice Wallace, the first woman elected to lead the north Louisiana town, was arrested in Baton Rouge on Tuesday and accused of stealing healthcare benefits.

Wallace, 50, allegedly received fraudulent Medicaid benefits totaling more than $75,000 since 2021. She became mayor in 2022, defeating the incumbent mayor by 12 votes.

According to the attorney general's office, Wallace did not tell the state Health Department that she was employed by the Town of Winnsboro as mayor, and did not report any income or health insurance availability from her job. She allegedly did the same while at another job before her election.

The attorney general's office said her salary as mayor would have disqualified her from Medicaid benefits. 

Wallace was arrested by Louisiana Bureau of Investigation agents Tuesday and booked into the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on six counts of government benefits fraud.