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NY POST---Food-stamp fraud has turned into foreign aid — to black-market profiteers in the Dominican Republic.... welfare recipients buy food with EBT cards and ship it to relatives. But not to starving children.
The NY Post found people hawking barrels of American products on Dominican streets. “It’s a really easy way to make money, and it doesn’t cost me anything,” a seller said.
She also vends EBT goods out of her Dominican home “I know a lot of people are doing it,” she said. The 47-year-old Bronx native in the Dominican Republic said she regularly gets barrels from her sister, who buys at Western Beef on Prospect Ave near East 165th St in Foxhurst.
The EBT scammer pays $75 per barrel through Mott Haven’s Luciano Shipping.
A Dominican Republic man sells a barrel shipped from NYC, stuffed with EBT food — part of a thriving black market. / Pic by Jose Ernesto Devarez
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And the food-stamp fraud doesn’t stop there......Bronx grocers ring up bogus $250 transactions with EBT cards and hand cardholders her $200 cash (grocers pocket the rest). No goods are exchanged.
Cardholder sends the money to Santiago — when she’s not spending it on liquor or other nonfood items. “We do it all the time, and a lot of people do this,” Maria-Teresa said. “It’s a way of laundering money, but it’s easier because it’s free.”
Jean, another public-assistance cheat in Santiago, told The Post he has peddled welfare food in Santiago since getting deported from New York in 2010. A thirty-something Haitian national, he said his sister in Queens uses her EBT card to purchase food before shipping it to him from Long Island City.
“Every other month, I receive the barrels from my sister in New York City,” he told The Post. “Whatever I don’t need, I sell. “My sister uses food stamps to buy most of the things she sends me,” Jean added. He says the barrels are filled with cereal, baby formula, juices, olive oil and canned soup.
He said his sister uses Long Island City’s Santiago Cargo Express, where barrels full of food cost $100 to ship to the DR. When The Post found Jean, he was lugging an empty barrel down the street and hoping to sell it to a friend for $35. Many Dominicans then use the containers to store water for their homes. kbriquelet@nypost.com
Pioneer Supermarket, Brooklyn, sells plastic barrels
used to ship EBT foods to family members
to sell in the Dominican Republic. / pic by J.C. Rice