Posted on 02/26/2018 5:47:06 PM PST by Mount Athos
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has published a report estimating that 35,891 food retailers around the country engaged in food stamp fraud, illegally “trafficking” more than $1 billion in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits annually over the three-year period from 2012 through 2014.
“Retailer trafficking of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits occurs primarily when SNAP recipients sell their benefits for cash to food retailers, often at a discount,” the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service said in a summary of the report.
“SNAP benefits are permitted for the purchase of eligible food items from authorized food retailers,” said the report. “The sale or exchange of SNAP benefits for anything other than food sold by an authorized SNAP retailer is illegal.”
The report, published in September 2017, looked at food stamp trafficking in 2012, 2013 and 2014, estimating that more than $1 billion in SNAP benefits were “trafficked” annually during that time period and that about 11.8 percent of the 303,522 retail stores authorized to accept SNAP benefits over the period were involved in trafficking.
“An estimated $1.077 billion in SNAP benefits annually were trafficked and thereby diverted from their intended purpose,” said the report.
“Overall, about 1.5 percent of total SNAP benefits were trafficked; and approximately 11.8 percent of all authorized SNAP stores engaged in trafficking,” it said.
Some types of stores were more likely to engage in food stamp trafficking than other types, according to the report.
Publicly owned stories did not traffic in food stamp benefits, the report said.
“As there were no publicly owned stores found to have trafficked, privately owned stories account for 100 percent of all benefit dollars trafficked although they account for only 54.6 percent of all SNAP redemptions,” it said.
Larger stores were less likely to traffic in food stamps than smaller stores and “convenience stores” were the most likely of all to engage in trafficking.
Of the 35,891 food retailers the report estimated engaged in food stamp trafficking, only 30 were categorized as “supermarkets” and only 42 were “large groceries.”
By contrast, 1,700 were medium-sized groceries; 4,850 were small groceries, and 25,954 were “convenience stores.”
While only 0.07 percent of supermarkets engaged in food stamp trafficking, according to the report, 23.32 percent of small groceries did and 19.42 percent of convenience stores.
“Trafficking was most likely to occur in the most urban areas,” the report said.
“The store violation rate rises in accordance with the level of urbanization,” it said. “The most rural areas have the lowest story violation rate of just above 5 percent and the most urban areas have the highest store violation rate of 14.4 percent.”
“Trafficking is defined as buying or selling benefits for cash or consideration other than eligible food, and the penalty is permanent disqualification,” said the report. “Permanent disqualification occurs when a retailer’s authorization to redeem SNAP benefits is revoked.”
A USDA summary of activity in the SNAP program in fiscal 2016 indicated that there were 1,845 retailers permanently disqualified from the program that year.
A breakdown by states showed that the largest number of retailers permanently disqualified from SNAP in fiscal 2016 were in New York (448), the second largest number was in Florida (175), the third largest was in California (133) and the fourth largest was in New Jersey (130).
Will walk miles for a cigarette, joint, booze, fix, etc. but can’t walk down the street for food! What an idiot chart .... probably produced by some lib professor with a multi-million dollar grant.
I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to start hanging thieves.
There are too many of them and they aren’t afraid of prison.
>> “trafficking” more than $1 billion <<
X fifty.
“Food Deserts”
You know, from casual observation, the people in those areas don’t seem to be in danger of immediate starvation. In fact, a good long walk might even be beneficial.
That’s because there is a high profit and almost no chance of getting caught.
If/When we simply switch to boxes of simple, real food - fruit, vegetables, bread and milk for the needy, you will find that 1) demand will drop immediately by 50%, and 2) your immigrant corner store welfare fraud will drop to nearly zero.
Where food is “scarce” i.e.) green areas in the Northeast happens to be the most remote, mountainous areas, like the Adirondacks State Park.
If they can, they will.
Hey, America, lets FIX it. Sheesh
Scarity has nothing to do with this problem.
In most cases, at one time there were stores serving these people but after way too many hold-ups, loss of goods through pilferage and murders in the neighborhood, insurance rates soared and the stores closed. In other cases, the storeowners just shut down for fear they would be killed so the store could be ransacked.
No problems with scarcity.
Kinda makes Trump’s idea of a food box make even more sense.
Agreed!
Any article that “estimates” 35,891 is crap. If it’s an estimation it should be 36,000. It’s an attempt to give fake legitimacy or outright statistical ignorance.
Food stamps are used to buy drugs and alcohol for addicts all over the United States. Everybody knows that there are certain shopkeepers in every U.S. city and town who will convert food stamps to cash. The going rate nationwide is—wait for it—50 cents on the dollar.
And it's virtually impossible to stop it. The only way to even combat such practices would be to deliver food directly to the recipients—instead of giving them a card—and, of course, they could still turn around and sell it for—wait for it—50 cents on the dollar.
So basically, food stamp fraud is part and parcel of the Welfare State itself. The only way I can see to combat it would be to impose draconian fines and criminal penalties...
Well, you could make them show up every day for pork 'n beans, and stale bread....every day.
Well, from listening to people like Crooked Hillary and Creepy Joe Biden, the owners of such stores are likely to be Indians (the Asian variety).
And Trump has proposed doing exactly that. Of course, liberals slammed that approach as being racist.
If these supposed poor people were concerned in the least about stretching their government subsidy they wouldn’t be buying a thing in a convenience store in the first place. But, they’re not concerned about stretching it, which says that A the benefits are too generous, and B they’re getting something in convenience stores that they can’t get elsewhere, and that would be where the fraud comes in. Of course there are people who are “shoppers” for primarily meats and alcohol, who sweep in and buy up the good sale items on their EBT for cash resale, in case you’ve ever wondered why you just can’t seem to catch any good sales at the grocery before it’s wiped out.
“Where the hell are the auditors?”
WE are the final auditors. If we haven’t been demanding accountings, it isn’t being watched.
This goes for health care fraud, too. Want to actually reduce health care costs? Here’s a big way.
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