A very small percentage of FS/welfare recipients are scamming the system. Most really need the help. When I was "spare changing" I always gratefully accepted food, from leftovers to someone buying me a meal - I always chose the cheapest thing on the menu. If someone handed me their leftovers from a restaurant, I generally ate them right there, which wasn't always easy since I was having trouble keeping to the hobo habit of always keeping a spoon in my shoe. Or pocket or something.
The reason I refuse to get FS etc now is, I'm eating just fine, and since I consider FS to be something you get if you're having trouble feeding yourself, I don't feel I need them. The other thing is, for that $200 a month, you have to put in 4-5 days a month doing what I call the "co dependency dance" with the FS office. The people there "churn" the system, dropping you, making you apply over and over, accepting you then dropping you again.... to keep their jobs. Frankly I can make that $200 a month putting in 4 decent panhandling days a month - not that I'd do that again unless it came down to sheer survival.
Another interesting angle on FS fraud. A lot of people are becoming homeless now. When you become homeless, you really find out who your friends are, if you're left with any, that is. Many homeless people find that a "friend" will take them in, but on the condition that the homeless person get FS and use that to pay rent. In my case, a "friend" I'd known for a long time took me in but put me under this condition. A guy I know online also felt very fortunate to have a friend let him live in his garage, the condition being, he spends his FS on food for his friend. Sometimes the homeless person gets some food, sometimes it all goes to the "landlord" and the homeless person then scrounges, panhandles, visits the soup kitchens for food. It's predation and fraud, but at the same time a homeless person has at least a place to sleep at night. This I feel is really widespread. I think a guy I know who was paying $250 a month to live in her living room, was also "paying" his $200 in FS making the rent more like $450, which is more in line for the area he was living in.
When I moved here, I logically assumed that I needed to get FS and start buying food for the land owner here. I HATED getting FS so in a sort of revenge I was getting cold sushi plates etc with it, decided to go nuts the first month then buckle down and start buying stuff for him. Well, two things happened. First, with the million meetings and interviews and letters of warning that if I dare buy a car or get a job I'll be sorry, I got aggravated as hell and told the land owner about it and he said I was not required to get FS to live here. Secondly, after a month they cut me off, so I'd have to continue the "co dependency dance" that keep them busy, and employed.
Now this thing on Craig's List. This is called cyber-begging, and it's been around for years. Google that term and you'll get some laughs, the problem is, people got a bit more skeptical of it after the dot-com crash dampened people's enthusiasm for all things cyber and also, there are SO many people begging now, people are tired of begging in all its forms. This is just another idiot scammer, and asking for certain brands etc may be an attempt to make it hard enough for people to try to help that they just say "Oh, hell, I'll just send you some money, what's your PayPal?"
Ebay also had, and has, begging scams. Buy this teddy bear because the money goes for my sister's iron lung, that kind of thing. So people bid the teddy bear up to $2500, etc. Some may be legit, but since 98% of everything on the Internet is crap, and the other 2% isn't real, I like to keep my donations face-to-face. Yep, now that I'm not homeless (And cross my fingers and knock on wood, it could happen to me again at any time; I'm working in secret on a skill that will hopefully support me so I won't have to beg for a living if I'm on the street again) I give stuff to homeless people who look like they need help. Mainly cans of food. I just got a bunch of Army can openers, and I'm planning to put little lanyards on them and hand those out, a lot of homeless ppl don't have can openers and have to rub cans open on concrete etc.
