Three days before Thanksgiving, someone was trying to steal peoples food stamps.
This became a big problem in New York a few years ago. Thieves would put skimmers on top of the card readers at supermarket checkouts and then drain the food stamp accounts of people who went through those checkouts. The state initially refused to compensate victims despite the fact that this wasn’t even a scam that someone could chosen to avoid. The only safety measure was to try and disassemble the card reader to see if there was a skimmer that would come off.
Eventually politicians changed the policy and compensated people after there were so many cases of theft that major newspapers were writing about it. I don’t know if theft is still frequent but less talked-about because victims get compensated, or if the authorities managed to put an end to it.
I’m not surprised that criminals would do such a thing, given that they do so much worse.
What is a food card, and food stamps? Is this some kind of US-only dystopia?
Yes, in a way. My understanding is that in the US instead of giving less fortunate people the money to buy what they need they get given tokens which can only be used for specific types of items. Obviously it’d be a lot cheaper to skip that extra admin cost and give the money directly instead of maintaining an entirely separate type of currency, but you can’t trust those filthy poors to know what they need. And hygiene products are one thing they don’t need, apparently.
The name is old, it used to be actual stamps in a booklet. It’s a restricted use debit card now. So you can buy eggs with it but not a music CD. Still pretty degrading.
