Your Federal Tax Dollars At Work

State Listings of EBT Fraud

Here’s a state-by-state listing of some EBT fraud stories: 

Alabama: Not fraudulent, but are EBT cards becoming a status symbol? In Alabama, a place called the “Rose Supper Club” gives you $5 off the cover price if you show your EBT card. It’s a promotion called “Food Stamp Fridays.”
Arizona: A 15-month investigation found roughly $700-K in EBT fraud. 18 indictments.
California: $69 million in EBT funds withdrawn outside the state’s borders in recent years, including almost $12 million withdrawn in Las Vegas.
Colorado: EBT cards used at strip clubs, casinos. Denver Post editorializes that attempts to crack down on fraud might not be worth it.
Connecticut: 27 state workers fired, 10 others retire after investigation finds massive insider fraud by government bureaucrats.
Florida: Investigators find that sales of EBT cards at less than full value results in a $2-million swindle.
Georgia: Man pleads guilty to EBT card scam valued at $4.6 million, believed to be largest food stamp fraud ever in the state.
Illinois: Sting on “LINK” cards believed to have generated $40,000 monthly revenue for one of the families accused of participating in the alleged fraud ring.
Indiana: State worker accused of issuing EBT cards to fake recipients. Also, police arrest five in EBT scam believed to have netted $100-K.
Iowa: Grocer, a former City Council member, convicted of witness tampering during food stamp investigation and trial. In a separate story, Iowa inmates found to have been illegally receiving food stamp benefits while incarcerated.
Kansas: Authorities believe as many as 7,000 fraudulent users of EBT cards are costing the state $22-million.
Louisiana: Eight arrested in food stamp fraud. In late 2011, the state said it had 474 active investigations into possible EBT fraud/abuse.
Maine: “Tip of the iceberg” investigation nets five indictments.
Maryland: Believed to be No. 2 in the nation in EBT card fraud, with one in four card applications “showing evidence of fraud.”
Massachusetts: Stores accused of buying EBT cards at discounted prices, and hooking up EBT card users with crack cocaine dealers.
Missouri: Welfare cards being spent in such distant places as Florida and Hawaii.
New Hampshire: Report says 10 percent of all registered food stamp recipients live out of state.
Ohio: Audit finds 33,000 replacement EBT cards ordered in one year. “[M]ore than 1,500 people in Hamilton County have ordered 10 replacement cards or more since 2006.”
Texas: State faced $4 million in federal fines for errors in issuing food stamps.
Washington: Store owner sentenced to 21 months in prison: $170,000 in her bank account on the day of the raid.
Wisconsin: Nine county workers suspected in multi-year fraud that scammed $300-K or more.

EBT Fraud and Abuse
watchdog dot org ^ | 1-2013 | Shepherd

Posted on Sunday, January 06, 2013 1:39:05 PM by doug from upland

Massachusetts Spends $91 Million a Year on Unknown EBT Card Recipients

Massachusetts also provides postage paid return envelopes to Register Welfare recipients only.
The Democrats are sugar daddies to a kept welfare voting bloc.

 The Story from the Boston Herald:

Anecdote — that’s Gov. Deval Patrick’s favorite word to describe any scandal involving EBT cards and his constituents. It doesn’t matter how solid the information is, how many law-enforcement agencies are involved in the take down, he always shrugs off the latest rip-off of the taxpayers.
Anecdote.

And now he’s looking at another 19,000 of them — that 4 percent of the welfare community that the Department of Transitional Assistance (a name that grows ever more preposterous) could not locate.

Those 19,000 MIA’s collect — based on an average of $400 a month — $91 million a year. That’s the estimate of Rep. Shauna O’Connell (R-Taunton). But the governor Friday went into his best pooh-pooh mode.
“That may not be indicative of a problem,” he said with a straight face. “We’ll know when we do the scrubbing.”

Scrubbing? More like a sponge bath would be my guess. This is a program that needs a good cold shower. But the governor, himself a former welfare recipient, recommends … nothing, basically. Call it professional courtesy.
Let’s not forget how the “scrubbing” began. Granny Warren’s daughter filed a lawsuit claiming the DTA hadn’t been proactive enough in registering the state’s assorted loafers and layabouts to vote for her carpetbagging fake-Indian mom. Then — bingo, the hacks located $274,000 for mailings, complete with post-paid envelopes for the gimme girls and guys to send back their voter registrations.
Have you ever gotten a post-paid envelope from the commonwealth? No, I didn’t think so. They’re not for taxpayers, just for the non-working classes to take part in a Democratic voter-registration drive.
The Patrick administration has known about these appalling EBT numbers for months now. They were only released after this newspaper filed a Freedom of Information Act request. Which is the same way it was revealed that Lt. Gov. Tim Murray was doing 108 mph when he mysteriously crashed his state vehicle in November 2011.
So much for transparency at the State House.

It takes months for a law-abiding citizen to get a gun permit in this state. But if you sign up for welfare with a fake name or address, no problemo. Nobody ever checks up, apparently.
When Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor of New York in 1993, he insisted that all welfare recipients show up in person to renew their applications. A quarter of the “recipients” never appeared. It’s hard to respond to a letter if you don’t really exist.
I know, that’s just an “anecdote.” So here’s one more. Years ago when the transit cops in New York and New Jersey started busting fare-jumpers, they made an astounding discovery. A quarter — there’s that number again — of those arrested were carrying welfare cards from both New York and New Jersey. In other words, they were collecting in two states.
And now the Mass. welfare rolls will get a “scrubbing” — wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Here’s what really matters to Deval and his gang of plunderers. On Thursday, as soon as the successor to the outgoing watchdog of the Governor’s Council, Mary-Ellen Manning, was sworn in, the governor nominated Mary Beth Heffernan for a judgeship.

Yes, that Mary Beth Heffernan, probably the worst public-safety secretary in state history. Too incompetent to properly broom Tim Murray’s auto accident or Annie Dookhan or the Sheila Burgess bad-driving fiasco, so they give her early retirement on the bench for $130,000 a year.
Taking care of dodgy old hacks, that’s what Deval et al. are about, not cleaning up the disaster that is the welfare state.
By the way, I still haven’t heard back from Deval on my generous offer to provide him with one hour per month on my radio talk show to explain how wonderful he and his administration are.

Welfare recipients take out cash at strip clubs, liquor stores and X-rated shops

• By KATE BRIQUELET
• Last Updated: 12:48 PM, January 6, 2013
• Posted: 1:47 AM, January 6, 2013

EXCLUSIVE

They’re on the dole — and watching the pole.
Welfare recipients took out cash at bars, liquor stores, X-rated video shops, hookah parlors and even strip clubs — where they presumably spent their taxpayer money on lap dances rather than diapers, a Post investigation found.
A database of 200 million Electronic Benefit Transfer records from January 2011 to July 2012, obtained by The Post through a Freedom of Information request, showed welfare recipients using their EBT cards to make dozens of cash withdrawals at ATMs inside Hank’s Saloon in Brooklyn; the Blue Door Video porn shop in the East Village; The Anchor, a sleek SoHo lounge; the Patriot Saloon in TriBeCa; and Drinks Galore, a liquor distributor in The Bronx.

The state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA), which oversees the “cash assistance program,” even lists some of these welfare-ready ATMs on its Web site.
NYC OFFICIALS WANT TO INVESTIGATE BODEGAS RINGING UP SUSPICIOUSLY HIGH SALES WITH FOOD-STAMP MONEY
EDITORIAL: CARD TRICKS
One EBT machine is stationed inside Club Eleven, an infamous Hunts Point jiggle joint known as much for its violent history as its girls in pink thongs.
Cops have been cracking down on the Bronx club since 2009 and shut it down temporarily in 2010. In July, five men were stabbed and two others shot outside after bouncers broke up a 4 a.m. brawl with pepper spray. The club appeared to be shuttered when The Post visited Thursday.
Club Heat, another Bronx strip club that dispenses EBT cash, is also no stranger to violence. A 33-year-old woman was fatally shot in the head outside the club in December 2011.
Critics blasted the government for turning a blind eye to welfare’s sleazy money.
“This is morally scandalous,” said Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. “I have nothing against strip clubs, but that’s not what benefits are for. I don’t blame [recipients]. If you are poor, it’s a crummy life and you want to have a drink or see a naked woman. I blame the people who are in charge of this.”
Welfare recipients receive food stamps and cash assistance under the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Both benefits are accessed through an EBT card, but only cash assistance — meant for housing, utilities and household necessities — can be accessed at ATMs.
A single-person household could receive a maximum $200 in monthly food stamps plus $158 in cash assistance. A family of four could get as much as $668 in food stamps and $433 in cash.
The food-stamp program prohibits the purchase of booze, tobacco and lottery tickets with an EBT card. But with the cash-assistance program, users can blow money on strippers or a six-pack and to tap welfare dollars from liquor stores, casinos and adult-oriented establishments.
The Post found dozens of pubs, nightclubs and tobacco shops where welfare dough was dispensed — and presumably spent.
The Boiler Room, a gay dive bar in the East Village, had $120 and $60 transactions a minute apart on Jan. 17, 2011. The bar is around the corner from a Bank of America that takes EBT cards.
West Village tobacco shop Shisha International had EBT transactions ranging from $40 to $180 in 2011. The store is near at least two EBT-friendly ATMs.
Legislative efforts to crack down on sinful spending have fallen short.
State Sen. Tom Libous (R-Binghamton) passed a bill in his chamber in June that would outlaw welfare withdrawals at gambling dens, strip clubs and other venues of vice, but the measure is gathering dust in the Democratic-controlled Assembly.
Libous is looking for a new Assembly sponsor to carry the bill in that house in the upcoming legislative session, after past sponsor George Latimer (D-Rye) was elected to the state Senate.
With only one of the city’s Assembly members, Nicole Malliotakis (R-B’klyn./SI), as a co-sponsor, the bill faces an uphill battle.
The Assembly typically doesn’t support welfare reform, because its more liberal members think the measures “hurt the poor,” Libous said. If the bill remains stalled, the state stands to lose $120 million in federal welfare funding.
The Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act, signed by President Obama last February, requires states to prohibit sinful welfare spending by 2014. If they don’t, they’ll forfeit federal cash.
“The people who are stealing from the program are the ones I want to go after,” Libous said. “Not someone who lost his job or a single mom who has to feed her kids. That’s what this program is supposed to be for.”
A spokesman with the US Department of Health and Human Services said states make their own rules on EBT cards.
Some states already limit where EBT cards can withdraw money.
A rep from OTDA, New York’s welfare office, said the state does not choose or regulate which retailers get ATMs that handle EBTs. Instead, retailers decide whether to use an ATM that accepts welfare cards.
Additional reporting by Susan Edelman and Brad Hamilton
kbriquelet@nypost.com