Posted on 11/04/2013 10:39:16 PM PST by detective
It’s a welfare fraud scheme costing U.S. taxpayers $750 million a year. People are illegally selling their electronic food stamp cards on Craigslist and other social media sites for cash.
CBS13 found two people here in Sacramento, both with the same idea, using Craigslist as free advertising to blatantly and illegally sell their state benefits.
Our hidden cameras were rolling as a woman, who we’ll call Lorie, told our undercover producer about her brilliant idea to game the system for a quick buck.
“Everyone said I was crazy, but I thought they’d say, ‘that’s freaking brilliant, man,’ ” she said.
Another man, who we’ll call Joe, rolled up on a skateboard. He showed us his CalFresh card he illegally put up for sale on Craigslist.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacramento.cbslocal.com ...
Add to this all the illegals filing false tax returns for thousands each and we have quite the problem.
more proof that government/socialism can never work
Vote for Barry 0'Cades and mrs bill!
I am confused. Why sell the card, if the holder can use it himself?
You don’t provide a link but, I’m curious to learn how they profit.
It seems “if” they need and qualify for food stamps and then they sell the bet card they’d do so at a discount and lose the food.
I can see how someone buying the card at a discount discount”wins” but, this makes no sense and by doing this they disprove their need for public benefit.
“How else we supposed to get money?”
Just curious, basically because I just don’t know...
How much of a balance is usually acrued on those EBT cards per month?
Are they mailed (to the user) each month, or does an account, tied to each card, somehow be given a balance from some state agency without the user having to go to a customer service person, at some facility to acrue said balance?
Is no one tracing the “usage” of where, when and by the registered user being conducted?
There seems to be some basic investigative tools here that could be used to nail down any anomalies by users, to clean up this 3/4 of a BILLION dollar problem...
Or are we led to believe this is a problem just too big to clean up, by the issuing authority? I mean, as long as we are only losing a little money, (/sarc), maybe no one will have any problems with this...
Not enough people to be outraged at this abuse, in any amount or number...
Another point I am glad someone else has made here...
Just another example of how abuses to a welfare system are, and will not be investigated, because as long as the system can stick it to the producers as much as possible, for as long as possible, socialism (in this case) wins...
I am absolutely positive this happens EVERYWHERE, in EVERY state, so the fraud is widespread, and un-enforceble...
At least from a conventional sense...
Again, as long as the producers are screwed over, no one utilizing, or managing this system will ever really be in jeopardy of going to prison for these abuses...
I don’t even care anymore, I’ll get mine. In this life, or the next.
from just the visual evidence I see/have seen, I’d say $750 mill is light by a whole bunch...
Indiana is switching to paying bi-weekly, instead of monthly, to make selling the cards less attractive.
This is ONE state...Add it all up from the 50...Or 57 if you’re thinking like the current pResident...
;-)
So almost like the unemployment reporting cycle???
Well, I have an idea that will SURELY get me deemed a racist (again)....
Let them keep the card BUT in order to use it at the store a picture and/or a fingerprint or even eye scan to authenticate that at least the person presenting the card is the authorized handler.
Then they would have to go ‘shopping’ and upon leaving the store ‘set up shop’ in the parking lot, selling what they just purchased at a discount.
They are at the point they let food trucks set up in front of restaurants so why not a little competition for the grocery stores.
Do you have a working link which goes to the article?
Thanks for the link, Detective. I have added it to the url space.
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