Nearly 36,000 ‘grocery’ stores engaged in food
stamp trafficking over a recent three year period (Obama), by Ann Corcoran 2/28/18.
So,
why am I writing about this? If you are a relatively new reader, you
probably don’t know that I followed food stamp fraud
stories for many years as a sideline to my refugee research work. (We had
a bust in my county just as the refugee arrivals began in earnest.)
I
first became interested in it when I noticed that the majority of busts I was
reading about, mostly at small grocery stores and convenience stores, were of
immigrant owners and managers.
If
you click here you can see
many years-worth of stories on food stamp fraud here at RRW. Many are million
dollar frauds involving trafficking perpetrated by frankly many Middle
Eastern/Asian immigrants some of whom sent the money they ripped off out of the
country.
Here is a story about
a recent report from the Dept. of Agriculture on the extent of the fraud.
Let’s hope Big Don will take care of these crooks!
Remember
readers, trafficking involves big bucks, your money! It is not about people
buying junk food on food stamps.
From CNS
News: (CNSNews.com) – 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.
Most
of the fraud is in small groceries and convenience stores!
CNS
News continues….“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.”
“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.
“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.”
States
where ‘diversity is beautiful’ have the highest number of illegal operations. 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). Go get’em Donald! Again, see my
food stamp fraud archive by clicking here.
There are some doozy stories there!
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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