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Unlimited EBT Card Glitch

Mike

Well-known member
The Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) system allows recipients of government food stamps to purchase goods using a digital card with a set spending limit, but for a few hours over the weekend, that limit disappeared for many users visiting Walmart stores in Louisiana.


Walmart and local police in Springhill and Mansfield confirmed to CBS affiliate KSLA that officers were called into the stores to help maintain order Saturday as shoppers swept through the aisles at two stores and bought as much as they could carry.


Xerox, which hosts some of the infrastructure used by the EBT card system, told KSLA that a power outage during a routine maintenance test caused the temporary glitch.


Walmart workers phoned their corporate headquarters to ask how they should handle all the shoppers with unlimited, government-funded spending limits, and were told to keep the registers ringing.

"We did make the decision to continue to accept EBT cards during the outage so that they could get food for their families," Walmart representative Kayla Whaling told KSLA. She added that Walmart was, "fully engaged and monitoring the situation and transactions during the outage."


Amateur video taken on shoppers' cell phones shows dozens of shopping carts, piled high with merchandise, abandoned in the aisles of one Walmart after the announcement was made that EBT cards were once again showing accurate spending limits.


Police spokesmen in both locations told KSLA that no arrests were made during the spending sprees.


Shoppers gave mixed reactions to the incident, with one man in the Springhill store told KSLA it was simply "human reaction" to stock-up when given the opportunity. Shopper Stan Garcia was more critical of the unscrupulous shoppers, however, saying that taking advantage of the brief glitch in the benefits system amounted to "plain theft. That's stealing, that's all I got to say about it."
 

loomixguy

Well-known member
"Stocking up"? Sounds more like looting with no repercussions to me.

Dillinger had the courtesy to use a machine gun to get what he wanted.
 

Mike

Well-known member
Looting all over the place when they found out the Limits weren't in force and then they shut down the cards.

Maybe they will take the over draw out of next month's EBT Card balance?

Not a chance.........................
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Mike said:
Looting all over the place when they found out the Limits weren't in force and then they shut down the cards.

Maybe they will take the over draw out of next month's EBT Card balance?

Not a chance.........................

they didn't shut down the cards...the cards came back online and they found out that people that only had 50 cent balances were attempting steal $100s in food.


A couple of Walmarts in Louisiana decided to allow people to shop, even though the system was down and they had no real way of knowing how much credit people had on their cards.


When the system went back online, the grocery store found people who had as little as .49 on their Food Stamp cards attempting to steal over $700 in food. Local police were called in as the crowd started to turn ugly, and overflowing grocery carts were left abandoned in the aisles.





Lynd explained the cards weren't showing limits and they called corporate Wal-Mart, whose spokesman said to let the people use the cards anyway. From 7 to 9 p.m., people were loading up their carts, but when the cards began showing limits again around 9, one woman was detained because she rang up a bill of $700 and only had .49 on her card. She was held by police until corporate Wal-Mart said they wouldn't press charges if she left the food.


Lynd says at 9 p.m., when the cards came back online and it was announced over the loud speaker, people just left their carts full of food in the aisles and left."

http://money.msn.com/investing/article.aspx?post=98e537d4-b670-4681-a1a4-65c8d88f6b44
 
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