ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 13, 1996 TAG: 9604150062
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
FOOD STAMPS ON THE BLACK MARKET usually are worth about half their face value, according to a special agent with the USDA.
The owner of a used-car lot on Melrose Avenue Northwest was sentenced to six months of house arrest and two years' probation Friday for selling two cars for food stamps.
Joseph Spangler, owner of Sport Motors, accepted $9,090 worth of food stamps for two used cars last year from customers who turned out to be undercover federal agents.
Last April, two Department of Agriculture agents carried a brown paper bag of food stamps to the car lot and drove out in a 1981 Honda. They paid $3,090 in food stamps and $300 cash for the car, which had a sale price of $1,495.
In June, one of the agents returned and gave Spangler a shoe box filled with $6,000 in food stamps and $150 cash for a Buick Skylark worth $700, according to testimony when Spangler pleaded guilty in January.
As part of the plea agreement, Spangler gave back the food stamps he still had, reimbursed the government for the ones he didn't return and paid a $7,500 fine. He also forfeited the cars to the USDA.
Because of health problems, being sent to prison would have created an "undue hardship" on Spangler, making house arrest appropriate, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tony Giorno said after the sentencing.
Food stamps on the black market usually are worth about half their face value, William Garrity testified. Garrity is a supervisory special agent in the USDA Inspector General's Office, which investigates food-stamp fraud.
At the time of the sale, the undercover agent told Spangler that his girlfriend's father stole the food stamps from a distribution center in Louisiana and that they were untraceable, Garrity said.
The USDA had set up an alert for the food stamps after the undercover buy to see who cashed them in, but Spangler never spent them. At his guilty plea hearing, his attorneys turned over $7,920 worth of stamps to the prosecutor, but attorney Richard Lawrence said the rest may have been stolen during a break-in at the business.
Spangler was targeted after the Roanoke County Department of Social Services told the USDA he was accepting food stamps for cars. The stamps are only supposed to be used by low-income people to buy food.
LENGTH: Short : 48 linesby CNB