Nick Shirley Does It Again: A $120 Can of Spam Busts Open Seattle's Food Stamp Fraud

Look in the mirror: You're looking at an attractive, smart, hardworking taxpayer. 

And here's where hundreds of millions of your food stamp tax dollars are going: straight into the hands of addicts, the pockets of pimps, and the funds of charlatans. 

It wasn't bad enough that California hospice owners were driving Ferraris bought with stolen tax money, and that FireAID donations were given to nonprofits that had nothing to do with actual, you know, fire aid. Now we discover that food stamp fraud is taking place in the open on the streets of America, and nobody's doing anything about it, apparently.

Independent reporter Nick Shirley, with a group of other indy reporters, revealed the open-air federal food stamp fraud taking place on the streets of Seattle. 

Shirley, San Francisco-based street reporter Darren Stallcup, Seattle's Jonathan Choe, and other intrepid indy reporters followed the money. 

Choe tells Shirley that EBT cards litter homeless encampments, where they receive so many of them that they begin to throw them away. Many of those "homeless" drug zombies use their food stamp cards to buy drugs. 

Choe and Shirley found EBT cards and sought to follow the lucrative scam from beginning to end. Shirley lays out how simple this is in a new video displaying how one abandoned EBT card can buy drugs, sex, and a $120 can of Spam.

Here's how food stamp fraud works:- 

Gov funds EBT cards with $- Fraudster offers to buy the card for cash- 

Local business partners with the fraudster to adjust food price to the EBT card's balance- 

Everyone gets paid with your tax dollars

Watch a woman who's some kind of street broker drive Shirley and another reporter to a second location, a Seattle seafood store nearby, to turn the EBT card into a pot of gold.

Shirley tells her, "You've committed fraud." She replies, "I know." 

Here's how food stamp fraud works:- Gov funds EBT cards with $- Fraudster offers to buy the card for cash- Local business partners with the fraudster to adjust food price to the EBT card's balance- Everyone gets paid with your tax dollarsEND THE FRAUD. https://t.co/WE7145oqdI

— Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) October 8, 2026

Watch the longer version that takes you through the interaction between the reporters and an apparently homeless guy named Devon who directs them to a place in downtown Seattle where they can turn the card in for cash. For interested law enforcement, Devon says the name of the place at minute 5:18.

On their way to the EBT money laundering place, they come across a Vietnamese lady who appears to be working with others. One woman seems to be calling a number on the back of an EBT card to perhaps find out the balance on the card. 

The woman who knows she's committing fraud asks one of the reporters how much is on their card. Shirley replies $120. She offers $60 and then tells them to hop in her car so she can launder it at the seafood market. 

"And magically, just like that, one can of spam and thing of sushi was $120," Shirley declares. 

Like James O'Keefe did when he was offered the ballot of sitting Attorney General Eric Holder during the Obama administration in an election integrity sting, Shirley didn't take it. That would have been fraud. He laughably told the precinct worker that he'd go get his ID. He was assured he didn't need it. He persisted and told the worker on the way out that he'd be right back, "Faster than you can say furious." 

For his part, Shirley pretended to try and enter a PIN into the machine and it didn't work. He returned to the seafood market a while later to ask them questions, but word had been leaked that he was around, and "suddenly no one can speak English."

You may already have been aware of this scam. But now, thanks to Shirley and Co., millions more smart, hardworking, good-looking Americans will be aware of it, too. 

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