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A disturbing video clip making the rounds shows alleged EBT thieves brazenly lifting items and then turning violent when grocery employees tried to stop them, a raw snapshot of how low some people will stoop when the system rewards theft over work. Americans watching that footage see more than one shoplifting incident — they see a culture that excuses criminal behavior and then wonders why law-abiding citizens are fed up. This isn’t entertainment; it’s a public-safety problem that elected officials keep sweeping under the rug.
Law enforcement has been forced to respond to a wider, more organized problem: prosecutors in Los Angeles recently arrested more than a dozen suspects tied to a ring that skimmed EBT and other benefit cards, finding skimming devices, fake IDs and tens of thousands in cash during raids. These aren’t petty kids grabbing snacks — investigators say coordinated crews are systematically draining benefits meant for struggling Americans and shipping money back to criminal networks. If this sounds familiar, it’s because taxpayers have been funding a system that’s an open target for fraud.
This kind of shirting of public trust isn’t isolated to one city; police in Riverside also busted suspects installing skimmers on ATMs and targeting cards that lack modern security chips, including EBT and pay cards that are easy prey for thieves. Detectives warn that skimming fraud is skyrocketing and that criminals deliberately seek out the weakest protections, which makes the absence of upgraded safeguards on benefit cards an unforgivable oversight. If the government is going to hand out funds, it must also secure them — anything less is negligence.
Across the Midwest, Illinois officials are grappling with millions of dollars stolen from SNAP accounts, with victims sometimes left without reimbursement and families missing the very food benefits meant to keep them afloat. The heartbreak of a parent finding an empty EBT balance after a deposit is a national humiliation when bureaucrats shrug and say the system is too big to fix. Conservative Americans aren’t against a safety net; we demand it be a safety net, not a magnet for organized crime and waste.
Worse still, investigations have exposed insiders abusing the system — state employees entrusted with distributing benefits have been caught setting up fake accounts and issuing cards to friends, stealing tens of thousands from real recipients. When the people running the program are part of the problem, the only responsible response is ruthless accountability, firings, prosecutions and prison time for those who betray the public trust. Soft sentences and suspended time send a message that theft is tolerable when it’s done from inside the system.
The political left talks about empathy while enabling a culture of dependency and weak enforcement that makes criminals of the desperate and the corrupt alike. Conservatives believe in compassion coupled with responsibility: tighten vetting, put modern chip technology on EBT cards, fund sting operations to break up skimming rings, and give retailers the legal backing to detain and hand over thieves to police without months of lawsuits. Stop making law-abiding citizens pay for the failures of bureaucracy and soft-on-crime policies.
Congress and state legislatures must stop grandstanding and start fixing the problem with practical solutions — mandatory security upgrades for benefit cards, harsher penalties for skimmers and internal fraud, and clear accountability when agencies fail to protect recipients. And retailers should be empowered to hire trained security, install visible deterrents, and cooperate with police instead of being treated like villains for defending their stores. Americans who work for their paychecks deserve a system that actually protects the vulnerable and punishes the predators.
If you are tired of watching taxpayers’ dollars disappear into criminal networks and the political class shrug, make some noise to your state reps and demand change now. We can have a safety net that helps the vulnerable without inviting theft, but only if we insist on common-sense reforms, strict enforcement, and leaders who put citizens first.
