Posted on 05/13/2016 10:54:40 AM PDT by jazusamo
President Obama’s expanded food-stamp program certifying flea market retailers as vendors to provide low-income neighborhoods with fresh produce has ripped open a Pandora’s Box of fraud and corruption. This week federal authorities in south Florida busted the largest food-stamp fraud operation in U.S. history. Twenty-two defendants in the largely black and Hispanic areas of Miami-Dade County known as Opa-Locka and Hialeah swindled the government out of $13 million by fraudulently trading food stamps for cash.
The crooked vendors operated food and produce stands at a local flea market as part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s initiative to eradicate “food deserts,” common in poor, minority communities where fresh, healthy food is tough to find or often unavailable. The feds say the business owners and their employees let food-stamp recipients use their welfare benefit to get cash in exchange for a cut of the money. They swiped the recipient’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) card (the government created the name to avoid stigma) for an inflated amount, doled out cash and kept a percentage. In most instances the recipient didn’t actually get food, according to federal authorities. “These flea market retailers are charged with having taken advantage of a provision in the SNAP program designed to provide locally sourced fresh produce and meat to low income families who otherwise would likely have no option for such food items,” said a special agent with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Office of Inspector General in an announcement . The USDA funds food stamps, which are then distributed by states.
Thousands of food-stamp recipients are believed to have exchanged their benefit for cash in this flea market scheme that “defrauded the American taxpayer” and “denied healthy foods to needy children and their families,” according to the USDA OIG agent, Karen Citizen-Wilcox. In a press conference attended by Judicial Watch in the Justice Department’s Miami headquarters this week, federal prosecutors coined the case “Operation Stampede.” The defendants, all authorized by the government to accept food stamps as part of the administration’s new initiative, face up to 20 years in prison. Authorities didn’t touch on consequences that the food-stamp recipients should face for also breaking the law. They also committed fraud by knowingly taking cash—instead of food—which is illegal under program rules. This has been going for some time and in fact, JW reported in 2012 on a federal audit that found food-stamp recipients were using their welfare benefit to buy drugs, weapons and other contraband from unscrupulous vendors. The same investigation also determined that some trade food stamps for reduced amounts of cash like in this latest Florida flea market case. Two years later JW reported that SNAP benefits were being sold online using social media such as Facebook, Twitter and ecommerce websites like Craigslist and eBay.
This hasn’t stopped the administration from expanding the food stamp rolls—in the name of reducing “food insecurity”—which are currently at more than 45 million, according to the latest USDA figures. This translates into tens of billions of dollars for a bloated program that saw its annual spending more than double in just five years. Besides the free groceries, the administration has also dedicated tens of millions more to provide food-stamp recipients with free fruits and veggies as part of the First Lady’s effort to revolutionize the inner-city diet. Among them is a $31.5 million effort to create projects that increase the purchase of fruits and vegetables among low-income consumers that already get food stamps and a $1.9 million research center that will find ways to help recipients make healthier and wiser food choices. This is no joke. The new compound will be known as the Center for Behavioral Economics and Healthy Food Choice.
Successful redistribution of wealth. No charges will stick. Like reparations, with a different name.
How could anything come of this? This is money spent by politicians to food stamp recipients for their votes. Does anyone not know this?
We are done working to pay for this
Food stamp and welfare recipients are paid by the government run by politicians. That they can vote is the problem
Excellent idea. They could live in tent encampments that are moved as the fence progresses, no travel time and work them 10 hrs a day.
Oh damn! Here I thought that this was about someone finally finding obama’s green card and fake BC.
“So many crimes would be impossible if we eliminated cash from the economy.”
Every transaction recorded. Complete control.
Of course there’s fraud. The opportunity was handed to them on a silver platter.
Mrs. RQSR, and I shop at a small grocery warehouse that happens to cater to mostly Black, and Latino customers, primarily due its location, and we see a lot of people don’t even cook as say we know cooking. Seems boxes of “Just add water, stir occasionally over medium heat” are the most popular sources of nutrition. The people we see with at least two shopping carts loaded with that crap are outrageously obese. NOT a single fresh vegetable, nor a single fresh fruit is to be seen in any of those shopping carts.
Let’s not even think “food desert” is the answer to obesity, or to malnutrition when people with the ability don’t know how to use their ability, or want to.
Welfare is the problem. Liberal government is the problem, and years ago the public schools tossed out Home Economics, and Shop Trades that used to teach kids to think, and to be self sufficient. Kids today don’t know how to cook, or how to even sew up their underwear. I could go on, but I’ll stop this rant here.
Patriots, we need to stop blaming everything on Obama.
Please bear in mind that all federal taxing and spending problems trace back to the corrupt House of Representatives. This is because the Founding States had given the “power of the purse” (1.7.1) uniquely to the House.
In other words, Obama wouldn’t have the tax dollars to illegally spend and mismanage if Congress would stop giving Obama what are effectively blank, signed checks.
Consider that low-information, last-term Obama is one of Congress’s many “useful idiots” within the corrupt federal government.
Remember in November !
When patriots elect Trump, they also need to elect a new, state sovereignty-respecting Congress that will work within its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers to not only support Trump, but also put a stop to the feds stealing state revenues through unconstitutonal taxes, taxes which Congress cannot justify under its Section 8-limited powers.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Also consider that such a Congress would probably be willing to fire state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices.
>So many crimes would be impossible if we eliminated cash from the economy.
Correction: So many crimes would be impossible if we eliminated govt ‘charity’ and followed the Constitution.
This ISN’T ‘govt $$’ that was stolen, this is TAXPAYER $$ lost in the illegal activities of GOVT.
Suprise!
It's just injection of cash into a mostly non-white community. How the money is spent or earned is not the point; the redistribution is.
“These flea market retailers are charged with having taken advantage of a provision in the SNAP program designed to provide locally sourced fresh produce and meat to low income families who otherwise would likely have no option for such food items,” said a special agent with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Office of Inspector General in an announcement . The USDA funds food stamps, which are then distributed by states.
What about the “low income families” that traded food stamps for cash. I guess they are blameless?
Who could have ever seen this coming?
Right you are, and that’s the plan.
Obola has been busy creating a massive interagency Behavioral Health citizen database via his Sept 15 2015 Executive Order.
Big Brother is watching everything you do, like never before.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/1... Proxy Highlight
Sep 15, 2015 ... the WHITE HOUSE President Barack Obama ... Executive Order — Using Behavioral Science Insights to Better Serve the ... Where Federal policies have been designed to reflect behavioral
FACT SHEET: New Executive Actions to Reduce Gun Violence
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/01/0... Proxy Highlight
Jan 4, 2016 ... the WHITE HOUSE President Barack Obama ... FACT SHEET: New Executive Actions to Reduce Gun Violence and Make Our Communities Safer ... Increase mental health treatment and reporting to the background check system. .... In order to improve public safety, we need to do more to ensure smart and ...
Executive Order — Using Behavioral Science Insights to Better Serve ...
RE: “...Center for Behavioral Economics...
How Marxian. Karl would be proud.”
What’s the problem? Just print more money.
I agree, you nailed it in saying “welfare is the problem,” especially the way it’s handled now. Years ago it was supposed to be a temporary thing and people able to work were required to work. It is now a free ride and an ongoing thing.
The other thing that frosts me is Michelle’s SNAP brainstorm. Whether fruits and vegetables are fresh, canned or frozen you can’t force people to buy them if they don’t want them and the ones you mentioned definitely don’t want them.
Yep in every state
This is why gas stations started offering $1 bananas and cup holder containers of grapes along with the junk food.
At the local fish market there is always a pimped out Range Rover in front of the raw oyster guy, paying with food stamps (cards) for incredible amounts of expensive food.
Was behind one of these guys in line once (a 1/2 pound of shrimp for my family...)
Something like a $400 bill for him, than back in the Range Rover
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM...
And they drive away.
Couldn’t afford oysters in those days.
Food stamps are underground cash. The original purpose was to make sure the recipients didn’t spend their handouts on anything but food, but that never happened. I wonder how much food stamps have contributed to the urban (Amish) crime rate.
Fraud? In a government program? Well I’ll be darned.
Yep. Wal-Mart on the tenth. EBT Day. Give it back to the states where they stole it in the first place, but don’t continue the program. Let em starve or go to work. If unable there are still enough “programs” that no one will starve in this country.
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