Annals of Fraud: Food Stamps, Retail Theft
Two stories this morning about fraudsters and their methods - one from the Government Accountability Office examining the level of "trafficking" in food stamp benefit programs and the other from the Wall St. Journal examining the increasing sophistication of outright retail theft.
The GAO reports that the migration from paper food stamp certificates to electronic benefit cards over the last 10 years has significantly reduced the level of trafficking from 3.8 percent to about 1 percent. On an annual benefit distribution of almost $30 billion, the level of trafficking in 2005 was estimated to be $241 million.
Ann Zimmerman, in her WSJ story, reports that retail fraud in the US in 2005 was estimated to be about $37 billion and growing twice as fast as retail sales over the last few years. Bar code fraud (replacing the bar code on an item with another bar code for a much cheaper item) and gift card fraud (copying down numbers from cards hanging on racks and then waiting for them to be activated) are among the techniques being used.
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