Posted on 10/30/2013 2:26:30 PM PDT by abb
Posted: Oct 30, 2013 2:11 PM CST Updated: Oct 30, 2013 2:50 PM CST By Carolyn Roy
A Louisiana senator is calling for SNAP users who took advantage of the EBT card glitch earlier this month to lose their benefits.
U.S. Sen. David Vitter on Wednesday sent a letter to Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell and the director of the state's Department of Children and Family Services asking for "aggressive action on the fraudulent events during the recent outage of the Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) system which led to massive theft of groceries in several Louisiana locations."
"The outrageous theft and fraud at several Louisiana retailers, including at the Wal-Mart stores in Mansfield and Springhill, is completely unacceptable," Vitter said in a statement released Wednesday afternoon. "Like many citizens, I am appalled and believe there should be serious consequences for what occurred; so far, I have heard of none."
Vitter has made three recommendations for state officials. • Take action to ensure that no reimbursements are made to retailers who didn't follow proper protocol. • Disqualify any EBT beneficiary who knowingly stole groceries during the outage. • Work to set up a local task force to pursue prosecutions of the theft and fraud cases.
A system failure by Xerox is blamed for the glitch that essentially erased spending limits on Electronic Benefit Funds cards in 17 states on October 14, including Louisiana.
As KSLA News 12 was the first to report, that system failure led to shopping frenzies at Walmart stores in Mansfield and Springhill, Louisiana, in which some EBT cardholders loaded up on groceries and charged them to the temporarily unlimited cards. Police have confirmed that there were reports of some people simply walking out of the stores with cartloads of groceries without paying for them, while many others left the overflowing carts sitting in the aisles.
Some stores followed their contractual obligation to set a $50 limit and call for authorization of charges during a system outage. There were no reported issues in those stores.
Vitter says the stores where problems were reported used a "store and forward" method, which allowed EBT recipients to knowingly leave stores with more goods than their EBT allowance would permit. "If a retailer did not follow procedures and allowed customers to charge goods that were obviously excessive and beyond limits, they should not be paid by taxpayers for losses they facilitated," Vitter said in his letter.
So far, none of the retailers involved have opted to press charges against those who used the cards beyond their limits. But Vitter wants the state to prosecute them. "Whether the retailers involved, who were also at fault, want to press charges should be immaterial since you have all the documentary evidence you need for successful prosecutions without their help."
Read Sen. Vitter's letter to the Louisiana Attorney General and the Department of Children and Family Services here.
Calls to the Attorney General's office and Walmart requesting comment have not yet been returned.
Wow! David Vitter the Junior Senator FROM louisiana!
Stands for right and wrong!
Vitter will be charged with wanting to take food out of the mouths of babies. He will be called hateful and lacking compassion for the needy.
It seems so simple to me. We know who charged how much on these cards. We know who went over their limits. Simply deduct it from future allowances until repaid. Why can’t that simply happen automatically?
You forgot to mention being called racist as well, as we all know that the Amish are heavily into EBT hand-outs.
Fraud should disqualify voters???
Don’t stop ther....put them on a chain gang.
The cards are like a checking account. The accounts were overdrawn. The holders in effect wrote bad checks.
The future deposits must be used to pay the overdraft
The people who took far more than what they were entitled can live on the spoils of that crime for the rest of their days. They should be permanently barred from participating in SNAP for the rest of their lives. Crime should not pay.
How are things in 1964? I miss that place.
God Bless Sen. Vitter!
IMO it was theft and they should be charged with it.
Doubt it.
As long as there are security cameras, then it should not be a problem since it was a store and they have them.
“as we all know that the Amish are heavily into EBT hand-outs.”
It’s time to stop referring to thieves as Amish because:
1. It’s hackneyed and no longer humorous.
2. Low information voters will believe it’s the Amish abusing the system.
3. We need to use truth in labeling to identify the real welfare scrounges, cheats and thieves.
I asked the cashier how he can do this with his EBT card and she had absolutely no idea what my question was about?
It seems so simple to me. We know who charged how much on these cards. We know who went over their limits. Simply deduct it from future allowances until repaid. Why can’t that simply happen automatically?
What else are we furnishing to these good for nothing, fat *ss, baby breeding leeches?!
>>It’s time to stop referring to thieves as Amish because:<<
It is a standard-issue meme that is used as sarcasm.
If I stop using Amish I would have to resort to what I do call them and get banned from FR! Maybe I could just use Namish?
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