Seven Public Officials Indicted For Food Stamp Fraud

[From article]
It made barely a ripple in the national last week when initially reported, but seven state workers in Delaware were indicted for Food Stamp fraud totaling nearly a million dollars, with five arrested and two others at large. An official statement from the Delaware state government reported on June 14:
Attorney General Matt Denn announced today the arrests and indictments of seven former state of Delaware employees for theft of federal money. All seven were employed by the Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS), and were responsible for issuing Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards, and three previous arrests were also related to the same investigation.
Two of the defendants were indicted and arrested last week, two others were indicted and remain at large, one was indicted and arrested previously and still faces charges, and two have already been convicted and sentenced.
[. . .]



It is all too easy to understand the temptation that free money dispensers face.
… investigators learned of fictitious and unauthorized EBT accounts created by Division of Social Services case workers responsible for case creation and maintenance, with each of the fraudulently created cases issued varying amounts of food benefits in the form of EBT cards. The investigation revealed that the fraudulent EBT cards were delivered to State Service Centers in New Castle and Kent County, and intercepted by the suspects working at those locations. Once intercepted, the cards were personally used or sold at a discount.
[. . .]
The Audit and Recovery Management Services unit found that seven employees created more than 100 fictitious SNAP cases to procure electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards that could be used to purchase food.
The cards were delivered to service centers, where they were picked up by the fraudsters, who either used them or sold them at a discount.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/06/seven_public_servants_indicted_for_food_stamp_fraud.html

June 23, 2016
Seven ‘public servants’ indicted for Food Stamp fraud
By Thomas Lifson

Presidential Legacy At Risk

[From article]
He boasts a rather impressive legacy, in the negative column. How many presidents, after all, have managed to increase federal spending by one-fifth and the national debt by two-thirds? What president can compete with him on having expanded presidential power via executive action, often without legal authority? Next to him, Nixon and LBJ look like schoolgirls. And who even comes close to his electoral record? Under Mr. Obama, Democrats have lost 69 House seats, 13 Senate seats, both houses of Congress, 12 governorships, 30 state legislative chambers, and more than 900 state legislative seats. Let no one say this man was inconsequential.
[. . .]
Our 44th president is as a political albatross and increasingly reminds one of the hapless Jimmy Carter in his final, miserable days. Indeed, the parallels with 1980 are eerie: Russia on the march, Iranian mullahs chanting “Death to America,” the economy stuck in the doldrums -- and so on.
[. . .]
The list is seemingly endless
[. . .]
A Third Iraq War is no longer out of the question, and would be an ironic legacy for the 2009 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Prognosis: war.
A nuclear Iran. [. . .] Prognosis (for Israel): poor.
[. . .]
Although Democrats are celebrating the fall of headline unemployment below 5 percent, the real unemployment rate is closer to 10 percent.
[. . .]
Even if the Fed holds off for now, the deficit, which is currently $439 billion, is expected to rise to $540 billion by 2020.

 

[. . .]
If the costly new [EPA] rules aren’t stopped, U.S. coal-fired power plants, and affordable energy prices, can be expected to undergo manmade extinction.
[. . .]
This month UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest insurer, announced it has lost so much money on Obamacare, it will pull out of the program altogether unless it receives a multi-billion-dollar bailout. And then there’s the Cadillac Tax, a grand time bomb ticking away in the background and scheduled to go off in 2018.
[. . .]



Over the past decade, the food stamps program has nearly doubled in size from 26 million to 46 million recipients (one in seven Americans) and more than doubled in cost from $29 billion to $64 billion a year.
[. . .]



SSDI enrollment has exploded over the past twenty years from 2.8 percent of the working-age population to 5.1 percent; lax rules have morphed the program into a form of unemployment insurance. For Democrats, the only entitlement “reforms” they’ll discuss are proposals to make the programs bigger
[. . .]
in the wake of the riots in Ferguson and Baltimore -- racially charged tragedies that Mr. Obama has tried to exploit for partisan gain. [. . .] Prognosis: mayhem.
[. . .]
Freedom of speech, religious liberty, the rights of conscience, and even intelligible grammar and clear thought, must all be sacrificed to the gods of sexual liberation. Prognosis: sustained unpleasantness, with a chance of civil unrest.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/12/obamas_real_legacy_ten_ticking_time_bombs.html

December 3, 2015
Obama's Real Legacy: Ten Ticking Time Bombs
By Dean F. Clancy

Worcester, MA Woman Pleads Guilty to Stealing $3.6 million in Food Stamp Funds

[From article]

Convenience store owner Vida Ofori Causey out of Worcester, Mass. was charged in federal court Monday after pleading guilty to $3.6 million worth of food stamp fraud.
According to authorities, Causey abused the program between 2010 and 2014. Food stamps, officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), is run by local and federal agencies. It is overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). She was able to scam the program by buying food stamp benefits from receipts for half the actual value.




“Causey purchased the benefits at a discounted value of approximately fifty cents for every SNAP dollar,” a press release from Department of Justice stated. “By so doing, Causey caused the USDA to electronically deposit into a bank account controlled by her the full face value of the SNAP benefits fraudulently obtained.”
As a result, recipients had cash on hand to buy restricted items. The restricted items could include alcohol, cigarettes and even drugs. The program is supposed to be used to provide food to low-come individuals and families. In total, Causey defrauded the USDA for approximately $3,638,900.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/09/29/how-just-one-woman-defrauded-food-stamps-for-3-6-million/

How Just One Woman Defrauded Food Stamps For $3.6 Million
CONNOR D. WOLF, Reporter

Criminals Stealing Taxpayer Funded Benefits

[From article]

Are there any criminals left out there who aren’t on welfare?
[. . .]
Just ask Vida Ofori Causey of Worcester. She was charged in federal court Monday with stealing “approximately $3,638,900.88 in fraudulent EBT transactions and SNAP benefits” between 2010 and 2014 at her convenience store on Main Street in Worcester. The J&W Aseda Plaza on Main Street was apparently a very convenient place for Obama voters to use their EBT cards to get 50 cents on the dollar.[. . .]



Here’s a story of some other recent “leakage,” in Manchester, N.H.
This one involves one Jeanette Hardy, 24, who came to the attention of authorities last June after she was shot in the hand during a home invasion by “an unknown African-American male.” She told police she was a “dancer,” but the forfeiture complaint filed by the feds notes that “she hasn’t reported any of her earnings to the IRS.”
[. . .]
 

The cops got a search warrant and soon turned up all sorts of “brown” drugs in her apartment, according to court documents. The most shocking discovery they made, however, was that she was actually married, to a convicted drug dealer in state prison named Zakee Stuart-Holt.
The police discovered that Zakee had rented safe deposit box #000061001839 at the Bank of America in downtown Manchester last March.
Let’s go to the feds’ forfeiture complaint: “Stuart-Holt provided the bank with his NH EBT (Food Stamp) card and NH Driver’s License to show proof of identification … his only legitimate sources of deposits are SSI checks from the government.”
Inside the safe deposit box rented by the EBT card holder on SSI, the cops found $560,050 in cash, or as the exotic dancer put it, “nothing of significance.”
http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/howie_carr/2015/09/carr_a_few_more_ebt_anecdotes

Carr: A few more EBT 'anecdotes'
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
By: Howie Carr

Boston Herald

Massive Food Stamp (EBT) Fraud Investigation In Alabama

[From article]
The massive probe, dubbed Operation T-bone, targeted those they say have been cheating the food stamp system to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars and sending at least some of the profits via wire transfer to Yemen.
The District Attorney's Office, the FBI, the Gardendale Police Department, the USDA, the Alabama Department of Human Resources  and the Secret Service all worked together on the investigation. Birmingham police, the U.S. Marshals, the Internal Revenue Service, Homeland Security Investigations, Walmart Global Operations, Hoover police, Pelham police, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office SWAT team and the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency helped with today's raid in a specially-formed task force.
[. . .]
They were arrested on charges including public assistance fraud, fraudulent use of a credit card and theft of property, which are felonies. All of those arrested are U.S. citizens, Falls said.

http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2015/06/fraud_ring_that_turned_ebt_car.html

Corner stores turned EBT cards into cash for drugs, wired profit to Yemen, authorities say
By Carol Robinson | crobinson (at) al.com
on June 03, 2015 at 2:36 PM, updated June 03, 2015 at 10:05 PM

SD Newspaper Appeals Denial of FOIA Request For Food Stamp Data

[From article]
"What is it about this information that should be kept secret?" one judge asked Bengford.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2013/10/newspaper-presses-fight-for-food-stamp-payment-data-175793.html

Newspaper presses FOIA fight for food stamp payment data
By JOSH GERSTEIN |
10/23/13 5:23 PM EDT

 

Food Stamps Lavished On Illegal Aliens

http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2013/04/case-worker-illegal-aliens-got-food-stamps-by-the-vanload/

Case Worker: Illegal Aliens Got Food Stamps by the “Vanload”
April 30, 2013
Judicial Watch
Corruption Chronicles

FL Stripper Guilty of Food Stamp Fraud

Guilty: Brenda Charlestain has been sentenced to a year and a half in a federal prison after committing food stamp fraud totalling nearly $24,000

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2203466/Brenda-Charlestain--24-000-spent-food-stamp-fraud-plastic-surgery-stereo-pink-paint-job.html

Stripper commits $24,000 food stamp fraud and buys $10,000 of plastic surgery, a pricy stereo system and a custom pink paint job for her car
Brenda Charlestain, 28, sentenced to 1 1/2 years in federal prison
Welfare payments were collected while she was making over $85,000 a year in tips from her job as an exotic dancer
By NINA GOLGOWSKI
Daily Mail (UK)
PUBLISHED: 15:17 EST, 14 September 2012 | UPDATED: 15:48 EST, 14 September 2012

Yellowstone National Park and Food Stamps

[Received from G]


Having just [returned] from Yellowstone where we saw the"do NOT feed" signs I thought this was worth forwarding.

The Food Stamp Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is actually proud of the fact it is distributing the greatest amount of free meals and food stamps ever.

Meanwhile, the National Park Service, administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, asks us to "Please Do Not Feed the Animals." Their stated reason for the policy is because the animals will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves.

This ends today's lesson

Woman Denied Food Stamps Kills Herself, Shoots Her Children

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/woman-denied-food-stamps-kills-self-shoots-children-181629410.html

Woman denied food stamps kills self, shoots children
Reuters
By Jim Forsyth | Reuters
December 6, 2011

Food Stamp Program Abuses

The Food Stamp Program in MA allows recipients to use their Electronic Bank Transaction (EBT) Food Stamp card to purchase alcoholic beverages, and to gamble on slot machines.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=212741

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Food Stamp Nation

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Posted: October 07, 2010
8:50 pm Eastern