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SNAP benefits are not that great in dollar value.
The program is to help poor families feed their children and give elderly poor a hot meal, bare minimum, no frills.
If I could choose where efforts are made to seek out cheaters SNAP would not be on my list.
OP--do you think it's possible that people you know don't have as much money as you think they have?
Some people have to choose between paying for RX and food or other necessities.
This is precisely what I have heard, from people bragging about it and making it sound like it is common knowledge and asking why I am not doing it. "Just don't tell them about it" is what I kept hearing.
Some people are not truthful when they boast.
At the same time, there are the documented cases of people using their SNAP cards to buy groceries, exiting the supermarket, and climbing into their Escalades with 22" spinner wheels.
Usually the most successful strategy for cheating is for the asset not to be in your name in the first place but rather in the names of a trusted third party. A common strategy is to claim the father of a child is not in the picture when indeed he is.
SNAP benefits are not that great in dollar value.
The program is to help poor families feed their children and give elderly poor a hot meal, bare minimum, no frills.
If I could choose where efforts are made to seek out cheaters SNAP would not be on my list.
Each governmental entity typically has its own fraud detection department. Hence, there is no way to reallocate fraud detection resources inside the SNAP administrative agency towards a different entity such as construction contracting fraud or income tax cheats.
This is precisely what I have heard, from people bragging about it and making it sound like it is common knowledge and asking why I am not doing it. "Just don't tell them about it" is what I kept hearing.
It is galling, and I guess I'd feel inclined to report them for fraud. That was my plan if my friend was approved for Medicaid benefits to which she wasn't honestly entitled (the penalties can be harsher if they find out farther down the line). It's a shame we have to do the government's investigative dirty work for them, though.
Does SNAP check and verify income and asset test limits? If so, how? What if someone has no job, no income but has a $1M in the bank? Does the IRS provide income data for both W2 income and other forms of income? Do they check bank account balances? If so, how? I've never gotten SNAP benefits nor any other kind of benefit but I sure know plenty of people who are better off than I am, have a lot in savings, make way more money than me and who somehow are getting SNAP. Are they just lucky they haven't been caught or am I stupid for thinking they verify and check stuff like that? I've heard all sorts of conflicting stories about whether they really check anything other than if you have income from a job that gets reported. It doesn't seem like they do.
If this helps, decades ago, we applied for snap. Husband had a business checking account with $1500 in it, something over the amount allowed, it was meant to pay for the materials for the next job I deliberately didn't disclose it. We were just scrimping by, not even sure if he'd get paid in stages. Literally loosing weight not eating. Worker found out. The saving grace was she had noted we'd be working soon so I only need it for 2 months. They go by when you are paid, not when you work. I then told her that is when that job will be completed so that is why I told her we'd only be on for 2 months. She let us have the food stamps and when it was time, I called in to cancel. She had already cancelled us. Honestly, the fact we had never applied before so were not a burden to the system and the extra info I gave her, they could've given us some kind of a penalty I think. I believe the longer you milk the system, the more likely you'll get caught. Age matters too, the older folks are probably less scrutanized than the younger able bodied
Do I think you need to cheat to survive? For most people who truly only have a tiny amount of money, sure they do. I find nothing wrong with it. Work a cash job to get yourself off welfare if needed, or add to it to be able to have food and shelter. Anything more, that's not right. People need to do what they need to do in order to survive
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Last edited by TruckeeTami; 02-22-2024 at 12:21 PM..
Note that these ACA Subsidies which are hundreds of dollars a month...are coming from somewhere. People certainly do not pay that much taxes to cover their hundreds of dollars a month. None do. The math doesn't add up
Yet the person making min wage working 20-30 hrs a week who gets a few hundred in food stamps is overly scrutinized.
A large family of 7 kids I knew of got like $700-800 a month in Food stamps. However, they were home-schooling so saved the taxpayer WELL over that amount per month...they were actually saving the taxpayer money. They also fed their kids from the garden so they were healthy, not costing taxpayers extra $ due to sickness. AND they adopted a child from foster care getting a measly subsidy (Subsidies are higher now) when it would cost 4x that for that older child to stay in the receiving home. This was a fellow foster parent. They saved the system a ton of $
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