← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · madrussian
Thread ID: 11885 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2004-01-13
2004-01-13 19:01 | User Profile
gooks trafficking in food stamps, negroes buying crack -- whites subsidizing both
John Lobertini
Every month when Jaymie Pickard gets her food stamps, she heads for the store to buy groceries for her three kids.
She uses an electronic benefits transfer card, or EBT, to pay for them. The state of California replaced the old paper stamps with the card last March.
Food stamps are to be used to buy groceries -- never to get cash. No exceptions. It's federal law. But our hidden cameras found an apparent food stamp trafficker taking clients into a market in San Francisco's Tenderloin District.
Traffickers need merchants because only store owners can redeem the stamps from the U.S government. She hands over the client's EBT card, he types in his pin and then walks out with exactly what he's not supposed to have: cash, and no groceries.
We saw this happen repeatedly with various known traffickers -- all women in San Francisco's Tenderloin. Over and over again, they took food stamp recipients into markets where they got money instead of food.
"I would characterize them as criminals," said Dave Dickson, an inspector general with the Department of Agriculture, which runs the food stamp program. "They are attempting to defeat the purpose of the food stamps... which is to ensure that families have sufficient food." It's not to ensure that substance abusers have their drug of choice, but that is often exactly what happens. We saw a trafficker give one man cash for his food stamp benefits, and then moments later, we saw the same man buy crack.
The traffickers make little attempt to hide their illicit activities. And why should they? Trafficking in food stamps is a felony on both state and federal levels, but apparently it's worth the risk. After all, when Tran Hoang was arrested for food stamp trafficking in 1998, then-district attorney Terence Hallinan dropped the charges. He did the same for Du Nguyen when she was arrested in 2001.
Until last March, food stamps were dispensed at outlets around San Francisco, and often they were trafficked on the street. Buyers would pay recipients 80 or 85 cents on the dollar for the stamps, which they would then redeem at full value from the federal government.
Five Investigates obtained dummy EBT cards -- the real thing minus the number that's supposed to be imprinted along the bottom, like a credit card -- and hit the streets. Our hidden cameras documented apparent food stamp trafficking in four markets in the Tenderloin. Federal officials estimate that each market is siphoning tens of thousands of dollars from the program each year -- money that is meant to feed families like the Pickards, but isn't.
"I don't think it's right," Jaymie Pickard said. "There's other kids that are hungry who would appreciate food that those food stamps could buy."
2004-01-14 06:26 | User Profile
[QUOTE=madrussian]gooks trafficking in food stamps, negroes buying crack -- whites subsidizing both
[/QUOTE]
I didn't even realize they still had food stamps. I think you have to be colored to get them.
2004-01-14 19:43 | User Profile
Lots of states switched from food stamps to what looks like bank cards. Now, someone can use food stamps in the store without any shame because no one waiting in line will know the card is not really a bank card.
I suspect the cards have reduced fraud. It was probably very easy to make color copies of old food stamp (actually, I've never seen one) and buy unlimited groceries, or unlimited income from selling counterfit stamps. Where the government still uses paper vouchers, such as WIC (which are printed with regular computer printers on check stock), I would think this would be very easy. Certainly much easier than counterfiting the government's official paper money.
2004-01-14 20:58 | User Profile
You'd have to give them all credit: they're only taking advantage of Whitey's stupidity.
Seriously, blame white liberals.