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