A Family’s Thanksgiving Dinner Ruined by a SNAP Scam

The Perfect Scam

AARP

True Crime, Aarp, Fraud, Society & Culture, Scam, Crime, Bobsullivan

4.5 • 980 Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2024

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Thanksgiving is a time for sharing food with family and feeling grateful. It means a lot to Georgete, a struggling mom who just wants to make the holiday special for her kids. She relies on SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits to get by, and when her Thanksgiving dinner is essentially stolen from her, she is devastated. The theft is part of a highly organized crime and Georgete is one of hundreds of thousands of victims, resulting in $150 million of taxpayer money stolen by criminals. And the scam is still happening all over the country, hurting an already vulnerable population.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week on The Perfect Scamp.
0:04.3	They pulled my transaction and had me go to the service desk, and I'm standing there with all this food, my baby in the carriage, just freaked out, embarrassed, upset.
0:16.5	I don't understand what's happening.
0:23.2	Welcome back to The perfect scamp.
0:25.2	I'm your host, Bob Sullivan.
0:28.2	Thanksgiving is a special time for family, food, for feeling grateful.
0:33.9	It means a lot to today's guest, Georgette Pappet-Demetrius, for reasons we'll get into in a moment.
0:40.8	And that's why, when Thanksgiving was essentially stolen from her, this struggling mom was hit with such a crushing blow.
0:48.9	But when you hear about the highly organized crime Georgette was caught up in, your blood will boil.
0:56.0	Because she was one of hundreds of thousands of victims who suffered when, well, every American suffered when,
1:04.0	$150 million of taxpayer money was stolen by criminals. And it's still happening. Let's meet Georgette. As I mentioned,
1:15.0	Thanksgiving means a lot to her. Yes, well, both of my parents are deceased. My mom died in 2000,
1:21.7	and my father passed away in 2017, and I'm a single mom. I'm 2,000 miles from family, friends, and everyone I know and love here. I'm
1:30.0	completely alone. So because my children are five and two, I just want to instill in them how
1:36.1	important family holidays are spending time together as a family because growing up, I had a big
1:41.9	family, lots of aunts and uncles and cousins. And I just look lovingly back on my, you know, childhood.
1:49.6	And I want to do the best I can to give my children that same feeling I get when I think about
1:55.2	Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter and the ham and the turkeys and the food. I love to cook and I believe,
2:03.7	you know, being Greek, that food is like one of the biggest ways you can show love.
2:09.1	What's your favorite Thanksgiving plate? I would have to say, I mean, I love everything,
2:13.5	but the, you know, honey, glazed ham, mashed potatoes, some good turkey breast, and butternut squash.
2:22.3	See, you've already got my attention because nothing wrong with turkey, but I'm a big fan of ham and so, you know...
	...

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