Food Stamp Fraud? Some Very Suspicious Transactions For Welfare Recipients

  
Most people run to the corner bodega for a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread, but some welfare recipients are plunking down $500 at a time in suspicious transactions, The Post has found.
Welfare users are only allowed to use their Electronic Benefit Transfer cards to buy food, yet they are rung up like fat cats in tiny stores in The Bronx and Brooklyn where the priciest item is usually an $8 pound of ham.
Earlier this year, an owner and a cashier at Glenwood Food Corp. in Canarsie, Brooklyn, were arrested for ringing up bogus transactions.
A federal sting found the bodega was recording phony purchases on EBT cards, handing customers about 70 percent of the amount in cash — and pocketing the rest. Goods were rarely exchanged in the scam, which defrauded taxpayers out of $985,000 in two years.
The Post found dozens of mysterious high-value “purchases” in low-end stores in a state database of 1 million EBT transactions.
Sheridan Mini Mart in Morrisania, The Bronx, rang up single sales of $543.40 and $473.50 on June 4, 2012, alone. That’s a lot of bread for a store where the most expensive item is an $11.99 jug of cooking oil.

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/food-stamp-fraud/2012/12/30/food-stamp-fraud-some-very-suspicious-transactions-welfare-recipients#ixzz2GjVXtOav