Free Republic

Four Massachusetts residents are accused of using more than 100 stolen identities to get over $1 million in food stamps and pandemic-era unemployment benefits in a multi-state fraud scheme, federal prosecutors say. U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Leah Foley said stolen identities from Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico were used to obtain $440,000 in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The defendants also allegedly submitted fraudulent documents in order to receive more than $700,000 in Pandemic Unemployment Assistance from Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Washington and Nevada. --snip-- Three defendants charged...

Two Boston men were arrested and charged with fraud that authorities say raked in so much Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) money that their tally began to outpace legitimate supermarkets. The men — Antonio Bonheur, 74, and Saul Alisme, 21 — allegedly operated their scams out of two small variety stores in the Mattapan neighborhood, according to the Department of Justice (1). Despite their small size and limited food offerings, these stores allegedly reported extremely high SNAP redemption volumes that went “far beyond what could reasonably be supported by legitimate food sales.” “To be certain, these were not supermarkets. They...

From our file named "Duh." The Alabama Department of Human Resources says 13 counties that reinitiated a work requirement for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the food stamp program, saw an 85% drop in recipients. The counties had been exempt from the work requirement due to high levels of unemployment. But with the economy recovering, the state of Alabama restarted the work requirement on January 1 this year, which resulted in the massive drop in SNAP participants. ... Nationwide, there are about 44 million people receiving SNAP benefits at a cost of about $71 billion. The...