Food Stamp Fraud Scheme Sending Money to Yemen

Authorities made multiple arrests in a food stamp fraud investigation in Alabama where some of the money was being sent overseas to Yemen.

Jefferson County District Attorney Brandon Falls announced last week that 20 arrest warrants on 257 charges were filed for Wednesday and a series of raids were performed on 11 Alabama convenience stores.

The charges range from fraudulent use of a credit card, theft of property and public assistance fraud.

AL.com reports, the massive probe targeted those who allegedly have been cheating the food stamp system to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars and sending at least some of the profits to Yemen.

Central to the scheme were Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards, a government-issued debit card that replaced food stamps issued through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Falls said they learned owners of several convenience stores in the Birmingham, Alabama area had been buying EBT cards from those who have been issued the cards for roughly 50 cents on the dollar.

Once in possession of the cards the storeowners and managers would then go to a wholesale store where they would buy goods and bring them back to their stores to sell at an inflated price.

“Several of the store owners are Yemenese and in conjunction with this, the investigation revealed that these same persons were sending wire funds - cash back to Yemen.”

In return, the person who sold their EBT card now had cash to buy items restricted from purchases under the SNAP system, such as alcohol, tobacco and drugs.

"They're selling their cards to get those things,'' Deputy District Attorney Cynthia Raulston told AL.com.

"Part of the problem, in my opinion, is now they don't have their food stamps card so they don't have the money to take care of their families or themselves,'' Raulston said. "I think it's a huge cycle of remaining impoverished."

Via: CNS News

Continue Reading.....

Dem House candidate: Without immigration reform, where will we get our landscapers and maids?

In a genuine gaffe (accidentally telling the truth), Florida Democratic congressional candidate Alex Sink revealed the class system at the heart of so-called “immigration reform.” TheWashington Free Beacon reports:

Florida Democratic congressional candidate Alex Sink said immigration reform was important at a Tuesday debate because, without it, it would be difficult for employers to find people to cleanhotel rooms and do landscaping.

“Immigration reform is important in our country,” she said. “We have a lot of employers over on the beaches that rely upon workers and especially in this high-growth environment, where are you going to get people to work to clean our hotel rooms or do our landscaping? We don’t need to put those employers in a position of hiring undocumented and illegal workers.”

Evidently Ms. Sink believes that there is no unemployment among American citizens in her disctrict. Or maybe she believes that unemployed Americans would rather receive unemployment benefits, section 8 housing subsidies, food stamps EBT cards, Earned Income Tax credits, and the other range of freebies available in our welfare statesafety net hammock. She should really explain why Americans can’t do those jobs, in her opinion.

Via: American Thinker

Continue Reading....

After last month’s shopping frenzy, Louisiana governor looks to strip food stamps from abusers

The Louisiana governor's office said Wednesday night that it would strip food stamp benefits from anyone who took advantage of an EBT card malfunction that in some cases caused an all-out shopping frenzy in some stores across the state, The Advocate reported.

It is unclear how many recipients stand in line to lose benefits for a year, but more than 12,000 received an insufficient funds notice when the EBT card system was corrected on Oct.12, the report said.

"We must protect the program for those who receive and use their benefits appropriately according to the law. We are looking at each case individually, addressing those recipients who are suspected of misrepresenting their eligibility for benefits or defrauding the system," Suzy Sonnier, the secretary of state at the Department of Children and Family Services, said in a statement.

The frenzy at some stores was likened to the busiest shopping day of the year. "It was worse than any Black Friday,” Springhill Police Chief Will Lynd told local station KSLA-TV.

Shelves were picked clean in a mob scene that left employees rattled. Walmart spokeswoman Kayla Whaling told the station the company made a conscious decision to keep ringing up goods rather than to cut people off.

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading.....

Food stamp benefits going down before the holidays

Millions of American families could face a sparse holiday table when food stamps benefits get reduced in November, and that could be just the start of deeper cuts to the program to feed poor families.

The modern-day food stamp plan, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is scheduled to scale back benefits for all recipients on Nov. 1 because a recession-era boost in benefits is expiring.

The cut comes as lawmakers also are considering billions of dollars of reductions to the overall SNAP program, which has grown substantially in recent years amid the weak economy and high unemployment.

The program is now serving more than 23 million households, or nearly 48 million people, according to the most recent government data through June. The USDA says the average monthly benefit is about $275 per household.

The exact reduction depends on the recipients’ situation, but a family of four with no other changes in circumstances will receive $36 less per month, according to the USDA. At today's average prices, that translates to four fewer whole chickens each month.

Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said that can be a major hit for a family that is already struggling with such low wages that they can’t afford food on their own.

Via: NBC News

Continue Reading....

EBT America

Walmart’s food-stamp shoppers and Washington’s big spenders have so much in common.

“Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher,” Justice Louis Brandeis famously pointed out in his Olmstead dissent. “For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.”

When the government acts like a banana republic, the people will behave as though they live in one. Juxtaposing the chaotic footage of EBT cardholders conducting a legal looting at a Louisiana Walmart this past weekend with the constant cable-news loop of lawmakers conducting a legal looting of future generations affirms this. Both demonstrate the perils of letting one set of people spend another set of people’s money. 

“I saw people drag out eight to ten grocery carts,” Springhill police chief Will Lynd told ABC News. “It was definitely worse than Black Friday. It was worse than anything we had ever seen in this town.” The catalyst for the food riot was an EBT computer shutdown in 17 states. Rather than shut off EBT purchases, the Walmart allowed EBT purchases without reference to account limits. The store, rather than the government or the EBT cardholders, will now make up the difference between the amounts on the cards and the amounts at the cash register.

The police chief observed one customer leave with $700 in groceries and most others simply abandon overflowing carts once informed that the government’s computer system had come back online. The devastation left in the food frenzy’s wake evoked the visual of Mad Max set in a Stop & Shop. “There was no food left on any of the shelves, and no more meat,” Chief Lynd explained. “The grocery part of Walmart was totally decimated.”

Tennessee law prohibiting welfare cards for liquor and lap dances flounders

A new Tennessee law that forbids people from using electronic benefit transfer cards at adult establishments including strip clubs and liquor stores hasn’t gone into effect — and one Memphis liquor store owner said no one has formally notified him of the change.

Harry Cardosi, owner of Uncle Harry’s liquor store, said his liquor license and other information about his business is on file with state officials in Nashville. So they ought to be able to find him.

The new law certainly affects him — Tennessee Watchdog’s examination of state records last year shows that some of Cardosi’s customers used EBT cards at his establishment.

He said state officials sometimes don’t generally notify him of new laws that affect his business.

If caught violating the law, Cardosi would have to pay fines of up to $1,000, according to the law.

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading.....

The Louisiana Heist - Food-stamp fraudsters should be punished to the full extent of the law.

On Saturday, Louisiana’s “EBT” system malfunctioned, causing spending limits on users’ food-stamp cards temporarily to be lifted. In two counties at least, recipients noticed the error, spread the word, and set about trying to check out as much as they could fit into shopping carts. At Walmarts in the towns of Springhill and Mansfield, employees called corporate headquarters to ask what they should do. They were instructed to “keep the registers ringing.” This they did — and with a vengeance.

By the time that proper limits on the cards had been restored a couple of hours later, the shelves had been all but stripped bare. “Just about everything is gone, I’ve never seen it in that condition,” Anthony Fuller, a customer in Mansfield, told the press. Will Lyn, the chief of police in nearby Springhill, agreed, telling the Daily Mail that “it was definitely worse than Black Friday. It was worse than anything we had ever seen in this town. There was no food left on any of the shelves, and no meat left. The grocery part of Walmart was totally decimated.” One man even managed to spend $700.

“I saw people drag out eight to ten grocery carts,” Lynd reported. Those who did not manage to take advantage in time simply abandoned their hauls in the middle of the aisles.

“Contrary to rumors,” CBS proclaimed, “nobody was unruly or arrested and [the police] were mainly there to help prevent shoplifting and theft.” Given the circumstances, “preventing theft” is a rather peculiar way of describing the behavior of officers who stood and watched the incident. Whether or not local authorities had legal cause to arrest the shoppers on the spot, there really should be no doubt that widespread theft took place — or, perhaps, that widespread fraud took place. Neither that the beneficiaries evidently believe that they could get away with it, nor that the victim was the unsympathetically anonymous mass of Louisianan and federal taxpayers alters the plain fact. This was a crime.

Via: NRO

Continue Reading....

Los Angeles welfare bum threatens riot over EBT failure

In a man on the street interview, posted to World Star Hip-Hop, residents on Los Angeles’ Skid Row threaten to tear the city apart over a hiccup in their welfare benefits.

The outage of the Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) system was apparently caused when the vendor Xerox Corp. was performing a routine check on their back up systems and it caused a system failure.

While there are some reports that the system has come back online now, the interruption to the service has caused some raised tempers.

“My heart goes out to people who don’t have food right now” one welfare recipient told WSHH.

Another man explained how he and his cohorts had been personally impacted by the failure of the system. “We had to cancel a picnic today cuz we were gonna use EBT cards to buy hamburgers and stuff.”

The man, wearing a Vietnam veterans hat,  explained that he was organizing a cookout for veterans but had to cancel it due to the failure. “We couldn’t do it,” he said.

One man told WSHH the bare reality of what the system failure meant for him. “We don’t eat,” he said. “We don’t drink. We don’t have anything.”

But not all the shiftless takers were content merely to complain.

“They had better resolve something because if it stays like this there is gona be a uproar in the city of L.A.,” one public assistance layabout intoned. When asked to elaborate, he responded, “A Rodney King, baby”

The Rodney King riots, which went on for six-day in 1992 in South Central L.A., stemmed from the acquittal of four Los Angeles Police Department officers on charges of police brutality for the videotaped beating of King. Fifty-three people died in the riots and more than 2,000 people were injured.

Via: Weasel Zippers

Continue Reading.....