Friday, December 10, 2010

Food stamp fraudsters stole $8M

From the Village Voice:

Federal prosecutors just announced they've charged four New Yorkers -- including two current city employees -- with mail fraud for stealing more than $8 million in food stamp benefits from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The complaint, unsealed in Manhattan federal court today, accuses four New York women -- including three who either currently or previously worked for the city's Human Resources Administration -- of spending three years accessing computer databases to approve more than 1,500 food stamp cases under bogus names, addresses, and social security numbers.

One of the women, Alice Bradford, allegedly paid friends to use their mailing addresses, which she and Tori Jackson (who worked for the HRA from 2001 to 2010) passed onto Vanee Sykes, an HRA employee who would then assign phony names and income data and approve the fraudulent food stamp applications.

Also charged is a 30-year HRA veteran named Lois Johnson, who supposedly controlled a post office box to which several of the food stamp cards were sent.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bad apples in every barrel.

PUT THEM WHERE THEY BELONG, IN JAIL!!!

Anonymous said...

In city project rec rooms experienced fraudsters give advice and tips on how to manipulate the system. Just like going to a professional seminar. Its truly disgraceful.

Anonymous said...

I am sure these 3 women never ate better in their lives since starting the scheme. Well, all things must come to an end...

Anonymous said...

most likely;
1. they are all Black American women who grew up on welfare.

2. have the belief that welfare is the Blacks 40 acres and a mule - Lincoln was killed before he could make good on his promise. .- A PWA - person with aids, was told by his Black American case worker, that welfare is for Black women and their babies, not for White men.

3. They probably did this scam too: when someone applies for welfare, the client would be told that their paperwork was lost. In reality the workers use the clients identity and information, ss number, dob, name, etc. to scam the benefits for themselves. there are a lot of benefits that the workers don't bother to let clients know about, emergency cash grants, furniture allowance, moving costs, security deposits and first months rent. They should look into those too.

You will see the publicity demeaning and degrading people on government benefits but most of the time the scams and rip offs by the employees do not make it to the news.

There was a Brooklyn warehouse stocked with furniture and furnishings for formerly homeless people or welfare clients who needed these things. The truth is that the HRA workers stole it all, would pull up SUV's and trucks on the weekends and just take it.

Anonymous said...

typical mudd behavior. where is the outrage?

Velvethead said...

A few years back, my business efforts as a vendor to real estate clients caused me to attend a charity event for NYC homeless.
The chairperson made a statement to the likes of "This year we have raised over $6 million towards Homelessness".
Everyone cheered.