Food stamp fraud increasingly sophisticated despite reports of drop in cases
By Doug McKelway
FoxNews.com
Despite several recent, well-documented cases of food stamp fraud -- including a couple in Washington State living in a $1.2 million home, 30,000 college students on the food stamp rolls in Michigan and Wisconsin beneficiaries selling their cards on Facebook -- an inspector from the U.S. Department of Agriculture told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Thursday that food stamp fraud is decreasing.
When pressed about the trend by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., Kevin Concannon, undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services at the U.S. Department of Agriculture said that fraud cases have dropped to an all time low record of less than 1 percent.
"It's one of the best records among federal programs," he said
What else he he going to say?  He gets two monster federal paychecks and his boss is up for re-election.
Even so, food stamp fraud has gotten more sophisticated, moving away from the simple petty crimes of coupon days, when recipients would trade coupons for cash in grocery store parking lots, to more elaborate schemes designed to swap easily traceable swipe cards for unauthorized goods.
Witnesses told the committee that food stamp fraud tends to proliferate, not in chain grocery stores, but in mom-and-pop stores. Statistics show, they said, that the more liquor and cigarettes sold, the greater the likelihood of food stamp fraud. Even when the fraud is investigated and stores are shut down - they're often re-opened by family, friends or the same person using a fraudulent application.
Even so, tougher enforcement in some impoverished areas presents its own problem.
"Do you really want to shut down the only source of groceries in a neighborhood? I think you ought to be very careful about that," says Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute, who's written extensively about food stamps, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
I love that bizarro world reasoning every time I see it. 'Yes, it's true that he is robbing banks and terrorizing people but he uses the money to help feed all his illegitimate children, so it's ok! 
'Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program'. Love the name, and garbagemen are 'Sanitation Engineers'.