The Candy Scam – Ohio’s SNAP Fraud Ring

True Crimecast

Stove Leg Media

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 25 June 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It sounds sweet, but this crime is anything but. Jamie and John expose a sophisticated fraud ring out of Columbus, Ohio, that just cost the SNAP program millions. Discover how three indicted suspects—Ionut Bizga, Doina Bacelan, and Juan Hernandez—allegedly used cloned EBT cards to purchase massive quantities of candy and energy drinks, then smuggled them out of state. This isn't your typical heist; it's a high-tech attack on a vital safety net. Plus, we'll discuss how Ohio lawmakers are fighting back with new legislation to protect vulnerable families.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Stoveleg Media, Igniting Conversation.
0:13.1	Welcome to True Crime to Go. What can I get for you?
0:16.6	Yeah, I'm going to need all the candy, all the energy drinks you can give me.
0:21.3	Just pile the junk food in a cart and roll it out to my car.
0:25.2	Pull up to the second window and we'll see you next crime.
0:32.5	Welcome to True Crime to Go.
0:34.8	I am John here with Jamie.
0:37.0	That sounds awesome. Candy, Energy drinks. What's your
0:40.4	favorite energy drink right now? I don't really love energy drinks. Like legitimately, they make
0:45.1	my heart feel weird. I've occasionally drinking a drinking, drinking, drank a bang energy drink.
0:52.5	Oh man, those made my mouth like super dry.
0:55.3	I'm loving some Alani right now, but, you know, they are expensive.
0:58.7	So we're going to talk about a crime today that kind of shows just how high these prices are.
1:04.5	Let's talk about it.
1:05.2	A way to get around it.
1:06.3	So we're going to talk about the world of organized fraud targeting a really important support system for low-income
1:13.6	families, and that's SNAP benefits. Snap stands for a supplemental nutrition assistance program,
1:19.2	and it helps millions of Americans put food on the table. But it's also become a target for
1:24.9	high-tech crime. John, you and I have shared about our childhood before.
1:28.8	My family got government assistance, and we had actual food stamps that looked like
1:32.7	monopoly money that we would spend. I remember those came in a book. And yeah. Now it's a,
1:38.2	now it's all on a card just like everything else is. But today we're looking at a ring of individuals
	...

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