EBT fraud? Oh SNAP! No shock in state awash in – Latest News
SNAP’s EBT playing cards are imagined to help low-income households buy food, not fund aspect hustles. But at LA’s Escamex Party Supplies bodega, these advantages allegedly fueled a brisk backroom business.
Jesse Cervantes-Gomez is accused of ringing up large pretend purchases on recipients’ playing cards and handing back roughly half the quantity in cold money. Law enforcement claims that taxpayers footed the invoice for “food” that by no means left the shelf, whereas fraudsters walked away with spending money.
It was welfare as ATM, proper in plain sight.
One purpose the bodega might have attracted the eye of federal law enforcement was how a lot money flowed by one unassuming storefront.
Jesse Cervantes-Gomez was busted in a welfare fraud sting in LA Thursday. CA Post
This low-volume store in some way allegedly processed $732,608 in SNAP advantages in a yr, practically twice its nearest competitor, with suspiciously massive average transactions.
This was the all-important clue. Investigators pegged over $1 million in suspected fraud at this single location.
Undercover brokers posing as fellow scammers barely needed to ask: swipe the cardboard, get the money, keep a cell quantity for future “deals.” A second sting netted $3,240 in phony gross sales yielding $1,740 money.
The alleged operation ran with the breathtaking simplicity.
The bust itself was textbook.
The Skid Row store is the alleged website of more than $1 million in welfare fraud. CA Post
Federal brokers, joined by LAPD officers, swarmed Escamex on the scene, adopted by the metallic click on of handcuffs on a man who allegedly thought he was assembly his subsequent mark.
Trafficking advantages for money, and submitting false claims for nonexistent groceries, are all explicitly banned underneath the Food and Nutrition Act.
But that sort of fraud, whereas daunting in its sheer scale, is no shock in a state awash in welfare money.
Cervantes-Gomez now faces up to twenty years in jail and a $250,000 high quality. Stores caught doing this will and clearly needs to be booted from SNAP completely, fined and hit with legal costs.
Recipients who play alongside risk dropping their advantages too.
And but, this wasn’t a lone wolf operation.
Cops closed the block for Thursday’s sting. CA Photo
The identical day’s raids prompted the USDA to slap violation notices on 33 SNAP-authorized retailers throughout LA: six for straight money trafficking, and 27 for permitting advantages for use for prohibited gadgets like booze and vapes.
This one coordinated sweep uncovered how widespread the rot had apparently grow to be.
Nationally, USDA research from years previous pegged trafficking at roughly 1–2% of whole SNAP advantages, including up to $1–1.3 billion yearly, with 12–14% of retailers concerned at some stage.
Smaller nook shops and bodegas have long been the worst offenders.
Broader improper funds have lingered round 10–11% in latest fiscal years, costing over $10 billion — although not all of that’s outright fraud.
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For years, earlier federal management handled these issues like background noise — occasional headlines, little sustained strain and many of bureaucratic shrugging.
It took the Trump administration, a new USDA Secretary in Brooke L. Rollins, and a decided native prosecutor to show up the heat.
Rollins, confirmed in February 2025, wasted little time: she pushed aggressive data-sharing with states, stood up a devoted SNAP Program Integrity Data Team and backed real-world stings utilizing transaction analytics.
The message was clear: taxpayer-funded packages aren’t slush funds.
In LA, lead federal prosecutor Bill Essayli has been the boots-on-the-ground enforcer. His workplace has hammered home the need to chase fraud that steals from each taxpayers and bonafide recipients. Together with federal investigators, these federal officers have turned knowledge flags into handcuffs in circumstances like Escamex.
What was as soon as shrugged off as too-hard-to-police all of a sudden grew to become a precedence price pursuing.
This LA operation exhibits precisely how retailer-driven SNAP fraud works, how simple it was to identify as soon as somebody bothered to look and how a lot sharper enforcement will get when management decides to stop wanting the opposite method.
Richie Greenberg is a political commentator based mostly in San Francisco.
