EBT Card Scam Shut Down In Lynn

December 13, 2011 7:39 PM

Ace Wholesale in Lynn was raided as part of an EBT card scam investigation.

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Local, News, Seen On WBZ-TV, Syndicated Local, Watch + Listen

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EBT cards, Food Stamps, Fraud, Lynn, Police, Scam

LYNN (CBS) – A year of police work paid off Tuesday in Lynn when officers shut down a long running scam.

Police moved in and shut down stores that they say were paying cash for food assistance cards and then turning them in to the state for money.

Police raided four Lynn mini marts that are suspected of fraud involving EBT, or Electronic Benefit Transfer cards. Steven Giles, a customer at the stores, says the scam is well known.

WBZ-TV’s Ken MacLeod reports

“It was pretty straight-forward,” says Giles. “You need cash, come down here and trade your food stamps for cash.”

During a yearlong investigation, undercover police say they discovered a scheme where stores not only bought EBT cards at half price, but also hooked up card sellers with crack cocaine dealers.

According to prosecutors, some of the stores did over half a million dollars in EBT fraud during the last 18 months alone.

Buddy

All the more reason to start random drug and alcohol testing. Tell me this? If these folks are in such need of assistance why would they want to sell the EBT card at half it’s value? I’ll tell you why. Drug dealers don’t want the cards. They want cash.

I say mandatory testing monthly for everyone on the till. I also say the card’s should have no value except for whom they are issued to. As far as the store owners go fry em, take the business and all their assett’s and lock em up for a few years.
John

Lovely!

gramps

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Duttycheyenne

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YaKnow

Wow SHOCKER….NOT
MamaGray

Sign of a declining country??….Physically able-bodied foreigners getting WIC, EBT, Sec. 8 housing, foodstamps, MassHealth and living like upper middle class people without working or paying taxes. Not my America.
deusest

I firmly believe that we need to help the poor and elderly, but NOT those who are milking the system.
There needs to be some serious investigation of the abuses in the entitlement programs. There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t see someone using their EBT card to pay for a cart full of mostly “junk food” many then use cash to pay for cases of beer, and bottles of wine. Out in the parking lot they load their order into a relatively new car or SUV. I have seen this happening in cities and towns throughout the East and Northeast.
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http://watchdog.org/43198/ebt-fraud-and-abuse-looking-past-your-state/ EBT fraud and abuse: Looking past your state « Watchdog News

[...] Stores accused of buying EBT cards at discounted prices, and hooking up EBT card users with crack cocaine [...]