I've watched the "underground system" first hand for years around my workplace with local police using our business like a fish bowl so to speak.......adjancent properties house a convenience store/ gas station, methadone/mental health clinic, new 20 million dollar multi-story subsidized low-income housing, a non-profit food bank soup kitchen, and liquor store.
Approximately 80% of the convenience stores over-the counter sales are on Oregon's SNAP card (supplemental nutritional assistance program or food stamps) There is nothing nutritional about this stores inventory....not even a loaf of white bread. Though people buy Starbucks Frappuccinos on the card. I've seen people at the counter with five cards asking the clerk to check the balances. Basically they are bartering cards. Local hostiles teach travelers how to obtain cards which I believe have a minimum value of $200 per month.
Clients loitering outside the clinic are frequently observed selling their prescription medication for cash which typically goes to the convenience store for malt or hard liquor or used to buy weed and other drugs from the local street vendors.
The soup kitchen draws the most extreme meth addicts I've ever seen into the area and serves a high percentage of the local incurable drunks. Though they constantly publicize they do not serve visually intoxicated individuals. Watching parents with young children truly in need having to subject their children to that environment is nausiating as is the manager lying through her teeth when interviewed by local media then driving off in her BMW X5.
SNAP card holders also go to the local Safeway and hang out in the meat department soliciting customers to buy their meat for them at 50 cents on the dollar.
I've reported numerous vendor fraud violations to local state office that "monitors" the program only to get "vendor fraud is a federal issue that we are not responsible for" deflective answer.
The level of fraud within these programs accross the country has to be staggering and being managed by pro entitlement buraucracies compounds. Then there's the directors of non-profit living high on the hog while they deliver the absolute bare minimums to maximize their share of the grant money.
:willy:
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