DES checks everyone who applys for food stamps for arrest warrants!

  "The agency checks everyone for warrants when they apply for benefits"

So I guess the the reason every government agency requests your Social Security Number isn't for Social Security benefits, but so they can hunt down suspected criminals.

Jesus Christ these people paid their stinking taxes now give then the food stamps the government promised them.

The reason for the Social Security number isn't for Social Security, it's to create a police data base so cops can have a number tattooed on every persons forehead which can be used to round up people the government doesn't like or considers criminals. In Nazi Germany it was Jews, in the USA it is pot smokers and Mexicans.

Source

DES boosts efforts to keep felons from getting food stamps

by JJ Hensley - Apr. 22, 2010 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

The concept is simple: Keep fugitive felons from receiving food stamps.

But in practice, it's harder to stop.

The Arizona Department of Economic Security took another step in that battle last month by helping state, local and federal officials identify more than 200 felons with warrants for their arrest who were receiving federal assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps.

The results were substantial enough for Gov. Jan Brewer to order the state's assistance agency to redouble its efforts to root out fugitive felons who are in the program.

"We're going to do it at least four times a year now," said Steve Meissner, a DES spokesman.

The agency checks everyone for warrants when they apply for benefits, Meissner said, but frequently a court will issue a warrant for someone who is already in the program, meaning they have to be removed.

The issue came to light this month after a roundup in which law enforcement targeted more than a thousand fugitives in Maricopa and Pinal counties.

After narrowing potential leads to several hundred names, DES ran the information through its system to determine if any of them were receiving benefits. There were 211 matches among about 800 names targeted.

The potential to miss names is growing rapidly, however. In the past year, DES has added about 250,000 recipients to the list, putting the total at more than 1 million Arizonans who receive some nutritional assistance.

As the total people receiving assistance increases, so does the potential loss to the state.

At the current rate, DES officials identify 50 to 75 fugitives a year receiving benefits illegally. The average Arizonan receives about $102 a month in federal food-assistance benefits, meaning the government could be giving away more than $75,000 in benefits to fugitives each year.

However, that is a fraction of the $772 million the state issued through the federal program in fiscal 2008, raising the question of whether it is worth devoting scant resources to such a small population.

"Now are we going to spend millions hunting them down?" said Virginia Skinner, director of development at the Association of Arizona Food Banks. "While the felons issue is disturbing, it is a terribly small number in a very large system."

But Brewer said the effort was worth it, noting that fugitives who duck warrants and receive government benefits are taking advantage of the system twice.

Though benefits to fugitives might be a small portion of the state's food-stamp allotment, errors in rewarding SNAP benefits, whether accidental or intentional, do add up.

The agency recovered more than $100 million in claims in the U.S. in fiscal 2008, with the majority - nearly $85 million - coming through mistakes made by the agency or the recipient. An additional $18 million was attributed to fraud.

Arizona's total added up to more than $800,000, with about $37,000 coming from fraud.

 

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