Having spent more than 1/3 of my life in the grocery/convenience store industry I've seen it all. When I started Food Stamps (similar to SNAP, but not exactly the same) were pieces of paper that in order to be verified had to be physically torn out of the booklet that they were issued in, and as the cashier you had to watch the person and verify that the book belonged to the person standing in front of you. THAT SUCKED! It was embarrassing for the people paying for their groceries, and for the cashier. Any and all change was made in $1 equivalent bills and actual non-stamp coinage. Real money.
The scams back then went something like this:
Person A has a drug problem, get on food stamps, sign the book illegibly, in a random amount of scribbling that could be any signature on the block. Trade that book, street value around $75 (Face is $150), for the drugs. First person out. Dealer/drug supplier now has the food stamps. These would change hands in whole book form until they got to the person who was in charge of changing them into cash.
That drill, for the most disciplined of users went like this:
Person B purchases the full book from someone at around street value, sometimes more, sometimes less. Usually this person has nothing to do with the drug industry beyond fencing food stamps. This person will go grocery shopping. Buy enough to make it look legitimate. Bring your total as close to $20 dollars without going UNDER. Say they hit the magic $20.01. They then hand over two $20.00 equiv. bills, and receive 19 $1 equiv bills, plus $0.99 in actual cash. $1 dollar equivs. are not traced, tracked or otherwise paid attention to. You could treat them just like a George Washington. Coin is kept, sorted and then cashed in... for cash of course! Meanwhile, you have your kids, your friends, your co-workers trade you dollar for dollar, converting the food stamps to cash. With the right network, and a little bit of effort, you would end up with $75 dollars +/- of food like products, and the same in cold cash. Rinse and Repeat.
Then we converted to the debit card system! It totally rocks, no more paper means no more coins, no more untraceable 1 dollar bills. Now you have to sell the whole card. And people do. Same prices, forty to fifty cents on the dollar. You can verify the card by calling an 800 number and putting in the card number, no PIN required. No ID Required to use the card. Cashiers are instructed by the government to treat all customers equally. You cannot call out any, ANY customer for their method of payment in a public manner. Pin pads have gotten more intelligent over the last 15 years, to the point now that cashiers don't even need to ask you how you're paying for whatever it is you're buying. You do it all on the PIN pad.
For a while, while managing a grocery store (which takes SNAP, WIC, Debit, Credit (no Diners Club, sorry) and Cash (no checks ever)) we used the "Nutrition Facts" litmus test. The regulations for SNAP benefits are that the food items must have Nutrition Facts on their labels. Most energy drinks were initially produced with Supplement Facts, as the FDA hadn't approved them as Nutritional (which we all know they are not). Of course, over the last few years all of those cans have changed their labels, with FDA approval. This is the reason we currently can't actually have the discussion about removing the Sugar Bombs from the approved food lists. Each and every company has put in the time and effort (read PAID) to be sure that their products conform to the proper food status.
WIC, as it worked from the late 80's until recently, required the verification of signatures and items against physcial paper vouchers and ID cards with specific limits. This is great!
Current methods in Oregon are found at
https://public.health.oregon.gov/HealthyPeopleFamilies/wic/Pages/shopping.aspx#balanceNow we have another card that can be sold. And scuttlebutt from back home says that is exactly what is happening.
The new WIC System could still work for the SNAP program, except for all my computer savvy friends out there in MMM land... Please describe the amount of programming and oversight that would be required of every POS system to be able to control the allotments of actual food tracking. Big Food puts out dozens of new products weekly, all of varying levels of nutrition. How do we properly administer a program of that magnitude. Where are the lines drawn?
Don't get me wrong. I really think the system is broken and needs to be fixed, but it will require a paradigm shift from those at the top... Remember these are the same people who have regulated the dairy industry to the point where Joe Well-Above-Average* can't legally sell milk from his cow directly to a person who wants to drink it in most states. The same regulators that have closed over 95% of the legal slaughter houses in the US. And the same ones who allowed Monsanto to patent DNA. It won't happen. The only thing we can legally do as operators of grocery stores is opt to not sell the products with the highest profit margins, and then hope to stay in business. Sugar, caffeine and carbohydrates are the most addictive substances in the world. Sell them, get the money, stay in business.
And, while staying in business, pay employees enough to pay their bills and get by. The people I worked with every day weren't in debt up to their eyeballs, they just had nothing to show for anything. All while being on SNAP and WIC and what not.
*Who are we kidding, Joe Average only vaguely knows what a cow looks like, and has never seen a live one in person.
