31 SNAP recipients to be disqualified for misuse of EBT cards during outage
By Clint Durrett
NEW ORLEANS —Thirty-one people who receive food benefits via Louisiana’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will be disqualified after they allegedly attempted to overspend during an October 2013 outage, officials with the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services said Monday.
Officials said a system failure by Xerox in October disabled the EBT system in Louisiana and other states. The failure essentially erased any spending limits on many beneficiaries’ EBT cards for a period of time.
As a result of the outage, the DCFS Fraud and Recovery Unit received details of approximately 12,000 insufficient funds transactions conducted while the system was down. The DCFS said no unauthorized taxpayer dollars were used during the outage, and the retailers are responsible for the cost of any non-sufficient funds transactions.
Monday, officials said six SNAP recipients were disqualified from benefits after they attempted to intentionally and grossly misuse taxpayer dollars by using their EBT cards to make purchases that exceeded the available balance during the multi-state system failure last year. Officials with the DCFS said 25 additional recipients are in the process of being disqualified.
Here are the original news accounts:
Lincoln Parish News Online 
02/24/2014 at 12:37 pm |
Did they ever figure out who is to blame for the problems that allowed this to happen?
02/24/2014 at 12:48 pm |
lets see….12,000 insufficient violations.
Only six folks get taken off the “governments T….”.
No criminal charges.
Way to go government…..they are on it.
We the people are well protected.
Who said crime does not pay?
02/24/2014 at 3:04 pm |
The violators are a protected class.
02/24/2014 at 7:36 pm |
Seems to me that, of they could push those grossly overloaded shopping carts I saw on the news, they could GO TO WORK.
A society which disrespects work is in grave danger. We used to be taught that any honest work is honourable; now people are taught that some work is beneath them, so they should sit down and live off other people.
02/25/2014 at 4:58 am |
if you are on SNAP you should have to work for it. I bet 95% of the people would be able to do something to pay for it. Sweeping streets,picking up trash,helping local govt,non profits, and other things.Most of the people on snap have new cars,4 wheelers,boats ,they smoke,drink ,have fancy phones and other things.I think food comes before all those fancy things.You can do something.Work or don’t eat. Some body has to work too pay for it so it should be the ones drawing it.
02/25/2014 at 5:15 am |
Sounds good,but the democrat party needs the vote of the poor people so they keep them poor on these different programs.
02/25/2014 at 8:21 am |
RustonHomeBoy is right, he has a point: there is a lot of simple basic work that could be done: cleaning public buildings, schools, for one example. I have thought that the schools could be cleaned on Saturdays, maybe even some painting, but it never seems to happen. Some people are ordered to perform community service: pick up trash, etc, when they get in some minor trouble, and it seems to work OK.
But in our society, how do you operate such a program, in a way which enables people to work, while protecting from the enormous potential for abuse through lawsuits for injuries, real or not, when there is a lawyer on every corner willing to sue the government ou your behalf fro the chance for a big payout?
02/25/2014 at 8:23 am |
In Huey P. Long’s day, a patient could not sue the Charity hospital, because by law in Louisiana a charity could not be sued. This is simplistic but basically I understand that was the situation at that time.
02/25/2014 at 8:55 am |
I bet there would be a lawsuit real quick if you made them turn off their govt phone before going to work.Pay for their med insurance,but no lawsuits for smaller things,or if it was their fault like stepping out in front of cars.People need to learn to work and hold a job.
02/25/2014 at 7:49 pm |
Ever read Tom Wolfe’s “Bonfire of the Vanities”?