They call the scam “water dumping” and it’s rampant across liberal America, wherever a “bottle deposit” system is in place for plastic containers. Andy Ngo got the whole rundown on film, of one pair in Portland.
Dumping water for drugs
Food stamp recipients have discovered the alchemy of turning water into gold they can buy drugs with. Funded by state taxpayers, of course. Portland, Oregon is only one of the jurisdictions where bottle deposits are in place.
According to the narrator of the clip Andy Ngo recently posted on Twitter, all you need is an “Oregon Trail” card. That’s what the state calls their nutrition assistance system. The whole scam seems perfectly legal but it’s not. The loophole needs plugged tighter and that’s in progress.
It works like this. Visit any retailer who accepts the card and buy cases of water bottles on the card. Head out to the parking lot and grab another empty cart. Teamwork leads to maximum efficiency. Break open the cases, twist off the bottle lids, then dump them in the empty cart to wastefully drain.
.@PDXReal1 reports on a fraud ring in the #Portland-area where people use food benefits to buy bottled water that is then redeemed as cash through bottle return. That money is then spent on drugs. https://t.co/z9rqVnipU4 pic.twitter.com/UR79hIOKnx
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) February 10, 2023
Once they all are empty, bag ’em up and cash ’em in at the local recycling station. Then off to the unlicensed pharmacist with cash in hand for recreational drugs of choice. Since a dose of dope or two burns through a month’s supply of groceries, most scammers try to use someone else’s card to do it. That’s illegal but hard to catch.
At the federal level, they claim to actually be planning a crack down on the “bizarre form of food-stamp fraud that’s flushing away taxpayer dollars.”
In states where they rely on the Colorado River for water, they realize the life necessary fluid can be much more precious than gold. In Oregon, where dihydrogen monoxide is in plentiful supply, they dump it on the ground to cash in the plastic container.
It takes dedication
Fox News points out that it takes more work to make chump change with the water dumping scam than holding a job. It “takes dedication to make any measurable profit off this.” The Department of Agriculture wants to stomp out such blatant abuse of the bottle deposit program.
They propose a new rule. One that would treat the practice as “a trafficking offense.” That means they can kick anyone off the food-stamp rolls who gets caught doing it. The comment period just ended on Friday, February 10. USDA is hoping to “finalize the rule by the end of the year.”
People who dump water to harvest the plastic bottles are “clearly abusing the program, and that’s just not tolerable to us,” Jean Daniel with USDA notes. It’s not as simple as one would think to catch the criminals doing the dumping. While massive purchases of abused products could be flagged by the computer, the fraud still needs to be proven and, more likely than not, the card will be stolen. At least, “reported” stolen.
Typical inept Connecticut. Too busy pushing abortion.
@GovNedLamontCT bottle deposit law changes: More containers can be redeemed https://t.co/9YP0aALkkD
— Sandie (@SandieBellz) February 9, 2023
Another factor is it can be done on a much smaller scale. In Bangor, Maine, for instance, Sgt. Paul Edwards, with the Bangor Police Department, confirmed that one couple “bought about $6 worth of bottled water, and then dumped it out before returning the containers in exchange for $2.40 in cash.” He said it’s not new. “We get ’em once in awhile. They get $2.40 and get a 40-ounce of beer and off they go.”
According to the USDA, the “fraud is difficult to track, as officials have to rely on store owners and vigilant citizens to report it to authorities.” They can’t even begin to guess how much it’s costing. “Daniel said she couldn’t put a figure on how much the scam has cost the food stamp program, though she noted it’s concentrated in a handful of states.” The Democrat ones.
“I wouldn’t say this is a nationwide problem costing a bazillion dollars, but it’s an egregious enough abuse of the program that we wanted to be able to punish the people who are doing this.” Especially because it’s not only water getting dumped out. People “have been known to dump out other beverages too, from milk to soda, just to redeem the bottle value.” That’s not good. “These situations negatively impact program integrity and divert benefits intended to meet the dietary needs of the nation’s neediest citizens.“
