Yakima police say they caught a local man with more than a dozen P-EBT cards loaded with hundreds of dollars, in the name of local kids.
Fraud is up as governments spend a fortune on COVID stimulus
YPD says officer responded April 21st just after midnight to a wrecked car stranded on top of a landscaping rock. Police say the man at the car, 23-year-old Alberto Pastrana, had a warrant out for his arrest for domestic violence assault.
After the arrest, police searched Pastrana and say they found 14 P-EBT cards for 14 different people. The officer who made the arrest says Pastrana accused him of planting them.
P-EBT cards are funded through federal COVID-19 relief funds and provide money to help families with children who qualify for free or reduced price lunch. Police say each of the cards were active and loaded with between $665 to $861.
The cards combined were worth approximately $10,000. Officers were able to contact the parents or guardians of nine of the children and say the parents confirmed that they wanted to press charges.
In a later police interview, officers say Pastrana told them he’d found the cards on the sidewalk and was planning on returning them. Pastrana is facing charges of 9 counts of possession of stolen property.
Democrats printing money like crazy while losers sell their EBT cards
The scam is quite simple actually. You get food stamps from the federal government and turn around and sell them on the streets for 50 cents on the dollar. It happens more than you may think and the hustle is happening right on your social media pages.
For families on food stamps it’s a lifeline to nutrition and helping put food on the table.
“They give us that for us to eat or have what we need,” Michael Beander, of West Philly, told reporters.
But getting food stamps on Facebook? It’s happening. One woman in North Philly is selling $150 in food stamps for 125 bucks on the 6th of the month. And on Craigslist where you could get 195 bucks in food stamps for just $95.
“You can go into just about any one of these corner stores and sell your food stamps for 50% of the value,” Arnett Woodfall explained.
He owns West Phillie Produce where you can get fresh pineapples and bananas but you can no longer use food stamps to buy them. The store stopped accepting food stamps because too many people were trying to abuse the system.