They Lied About Their Residency in Alaska
The show is based on their life in the Alaskan wilderness, so for fans to discover that the family had fraudulently claimed to be permanent residents was seriously outrageous. It was revealed that between the years of 2010 and 2013, the Brown family had tricked the state into paying them permanent fund division checks.
Source: Discovery
PDF checks are “an annual payment given to Alaskan residents from earnings of mineral royalties,” and to qualify, you need to have lived there for at least one year. Billy Brown was able to slyly collect $7,956 to his bank account until a petition surfaced in 2016 demanding that he return the money and the show be taken off the air. It’s crazy to think they couldn’t even last a year in the place.