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Food Stamps

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With any program, no matter what it is, there’ll always be individuals who try and fraud the system. And with food stamps constantly being in the spotlight, fraud in that program is under particularly heavy scrutiny.

Selling EBT Cards

One of the most common forms of food stamps fraud is listing an EBT card for sale, such as the recent spate last year on Craigslist. Food stamps recipients would offer up their EBT cards for cash, often taking a bit of a hit just so they could pocket the money. This is illegal, of course, as only users to whom the cards are registered are suppose to be using them. This is called food stamp trafficking, even though food rarely passes hands.

Application Dishonesty

Another common form of food stamps fraud is blatant lying on the application so as to get extra benefits, or even benefits when none would usually apply. In theory, the application process is supposed to vet the honest from the dishonest, but there are always people who are “skilled” enough to fudge the facts in their favor.

Erroneous Payments

Last October, two Walmart stores in Louisiana experienced a glitch with EBT cards that caused them to have unlimited balances. Once shoppers cottoned on to this, they raided the shelves as furiously as though there was an impending hurricane; when the mistake was discovered and corrected, and shoppers stuck with their regular balances, they abandoned their carts en masse. These kinds of glitches don’t happen often, but taking advantage of them is technically fraud.

Stores and Shops

Independent grocery stores aren’t monitored quite as closely as bigger chains, but not because legal authorities give them a free pass. Instead, shops in rural areas are just harder to monitor because they’re out of the way and tend to fly under the radar. But some stores accept EBT cards and give back cash along with groceries, often taking a cut for themselves; they may also offer the shopper products that can’t be bought with food stamps. Though shopkeepers may see this as aiding the impoverished, it does fall outside of the legal confines of the SNAP program.

Ignoring Other Options

People who apply for food stamps are supposed to be using them to supplement their grocery budgets, not using EBT cards as a replacement for their own money. And yet, that’s what a small portion of recipients are doing by refusing to get work when they could. This isn’t meant to include the population that has genuine difficulties in obtaining a well-paying job, but rather the “Lobster Queens” and “Surfer Dudes” who proudly flaunt their unemployed status as a way of living a high life on the taxpayer’s dime.

Actions Against Fraud

The United States Department of Agriculture monitors very closely the use and abuse of food stamps fraud. They use technology to track EBT cards and how they’re used, employing an electronic “audit trail” to highlight trafficking or other forms of fraud.

As well, they also employ more than 100 analysts and investigators who are specially trained to recognize SNAP fraud, such as going undercover in sting operations. In 2012, for example, they looked at more than 15,000 stores, performed 4,500 undercover operations, permanently disqualified 1,400 stores, sanctioned almost 700, and laid 342 convictions to the tune of $57.7 million.

The food stamps program might not be perfect and suffer from fraud each year, but authorities do their best to try and halt the many ways it can happen.

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