Chaco store accused of food-stamp fraud

Isolated community worried about food, services

KINTEEL CH’ÍNÍLÍNÍ, N.M.

Chaco Trade Center is no longer a SNAP retailer and a propane supplier.

“It’s had a huge impact on our community and our business,” said Dennis Buckman, owner of Chaco Trade Center in Pueblo Pintado.

SNAP, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as food stamps, account for much of the store’s annual sales.

And because the store no longer accepts EBT, the electronic benefit transfer cards, it’s taken a hard sales hit.

“We had lost just about all the capital we’ve accumulated within the last ten years,” Buckman explained.

However, he kept his staff and hasn’t fired anyone.

“We kept our crew intact,” he said. “At this point, we’re in a cycle where we’re just not keeping up, and the business perspective – we either sell or close.”

This means getting rid of the propane dock refilling station to maintain his business, which didn’t bring in any money.

“Which is unusual,” Buckman said. “And at the same time, we weren’t making money in our grocery store, which was also unusual.”

What happened?

Buckman said he lost his store’s SNAP permit in March after a male contract worker from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service notified him that his store had violated SNAP regulations.

FNS then initiated action to revoke the authorization for the store to accept SNAP benefits.

Buckman said the man, against all reason, bought toilet paper, plastic spoons, and sponges with an EBT card.

“And we don’t have integrated point of sale,” Buckman said. “My two oldest, most trust clerks who’ve done this for years rang up a sale with non-food items and then ran (the contract worker’s) card.”

Buckman said his old-fashioned cash registers ran the transaction, and the man swiped his card through the terminal, on which one must physically select “EBT” for payment processing.

“This is the kind of thing we train people not to do,” Buckman said. “There were two clerks and three transactions when I figured out what happened. That was a horrible mistake. We know better. There was no financial gain for them.

“The money went into the register,” he said. “There was no profit motive for that. It was just a mistake.”

The same guy later caught Buckman in the parking lot and asked him if he wanted to buy a case of Red Bull he had purchased at a Sam’s Club store with his EBT card.

“(Against) my better judgment, I did,” Buckman said. “In his report, he wrote that I approached him, directed him to make that purchase so I could give him a discounted cash amount. That’s called food-stamp trafficking, and it’s a real federal crime.

“But that’s not how it went,” he said.

SNAP customers must use their SNAP EBT benefits to buy SNAP-eligible foods or drinks, including fruits and vegetables, meat, poultry and fish, dairy products, breads and cereals, snack foods, non-alcoholic beverages and seeds and plants that produce food for the household.

It’s against the law to give customers cash for SNAP EBT benefits, and this is trafficking, according to FNS.

It’s also against the law to buy store inventory from customers who buy it for someone with their SNAP benefits. This is indirect trafficking, and it includes buying cases of energy drinks, soda, or other items from people who offer to sell it for a low price.

Retailers who trade SNAP EBT benefits directly or indirectly will lose their SNAP permit.

Worried he would pay a hefty penalty or face criminal charges, Buckman said he and his family hired a lawyer, who advised them not to worry and that the parties involved in the situation would conduct the matter by email.

“Sure enough, that’s what happened,” Buckman said. “When it was all said and done, we lost an appeal. We lost the initial appeal, we lost a second appeal, and we didn’t have the financial ability or the time to go to the next level, which is a federal lawsuit.”

Store for sale

Buckman and his family are selling Chaco Trade Center, established in 1985. Their asking price is $1.3 million, or the best offer.

It’s a fully equipped, 3,200-square foot store, and the land it sits on is included.

Chaco Trade Center was built on the legacy of pioneer wagon traders.

Last year, the store generated $1.5 million in gross revenue, which generates $82,000 in cash flow, according to the business listing on LoopNet.

Sales increased – as people stayed home – during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. The listing includes a coin-op laundromat, mailboxes, and a gas station.

“We’ve seen 13 percent revenue growth in the last four years with a corresponding 30 percent increase in gross profit over the last four years as both the population has increased and our program has drawn more profitable streams of revenue,” Buckman wrote on the sale listing.

A second location in western Bernalillo County is also part of the listing. The second location, a 3,000-square foot metal building, equipment, and outbuildings, is on 20 acres of land. The buildings and the land are valued at $500,000.

“We’ve been working to sell our store, and I’m hopeful that we have a buyer,” Buckman said. “So, there is a chance we have a resolution to this relatively soon, but the nature of the persecution is heavy-handed on one side.”

Buckman said the situation affects his entire family because if they do sell the store, much of the proceeds would go into a file because of this action. That’s insulting, said Buckman.

What happens next?

Buckman said he posted a petition on a counter in his store. The petition drew signatures from the community, but it may not be practical, said Buckman, who submitted the petition to his lawyer.

To accumulate more signatures, he also worked with Torreon-Star Lake, Pueblo Pintado, and Whitehorse Lake chapters.

“And we turned all that in and went through the demographics of our community,” Buckman said. “We had people who walked to our store.

“We are in the most technical definition of a food desert you can find in America with some of the poorest people in a very poor area,” he said.

Buckman and his family also contacted New Mexico Congresswoman Theresa Leger Fernández’s office for help.

Her office staff was generous enough to arrange a meeting between high-level parties because they saw it as an offense against the Pueblo Pintado community.

Buckman said the Department of Agriculture representatives told Fernández and her representatives the same thing they told him: no.

“No, just no,” Buckman said. “Not ‘no, there might be a hope of a compromise.’ No explanation. Just no.

“And there’s nowhere to go,” he said. “They (agency) got a hold of us and said, ‘We’re going to have to close this out.’ It’s a good example of bureaucracy and a government agency that doesn’t answer to anyone. And it has been heavy-handed.”

Buckman added: “I know there’s a lot of fraud in these programs. I’ve been in (the grocery store business) for 30 years. There is a lot of fraud but the nature of what has been done to us is the fraud in this case.”

Online petition

Edwinna John, who lives in the community, said SNAP and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, help most people here afford groceries in a typical month.

And some rely on the Social Security Administration’s benefits, such as retirement, disability, and supplemental security income.

“The whole community, that’s what they all have,” John said. “Not everyone has a job.

“Some (people) are caregivers, and they get paid every two weeks,” she said. “And they don’t get paid well, doing their job.”

Pueblo Pintado has a population of about 388. It’s a community with economic pain – the unemployment is high.

Some people here say it’s as if the community is experiencing the Great Depression. And there’s only one store – Chaco Trade Center – here between Crownpoint and Cuba.

“The only jobs people would have here are at the school,” John said. “But the only thing is that the people who do work here, they’re mostly people who travel out from Crownpoint and work in Pueblo Pintado.”

John late last month started an online petition on Change.org, asking the Department of Agriculture to restore SNAP participation at Chaco Trade Center. Her petition drew over 7,600 signatures as of Dec. 22.

John hopes the agency will rescind the store’s SNAP disqualification because food is a basic need that many community members struggle to afford.

She, along with others, said many people here are on fixed incomes, living with disabilities, and there are households with children likely struggling to put food on the table. It was because of SNAP and WIC that many people were staying afloat.

“There are single mothers who have babies and toddlers, and they have WIC,” John said. “It’s so hard because one would be crying for formula (in the store) and can’t purchase it.

“My husband and I (usually) purchase (items) for them. I get suckered in with helping people,” she said. “And some people here have transportation issues. Some don’t.”

She added, “It’s a community where you can drive a vehicle and most of them aren’t registered because they all live five to ten minutes from the store. Those are the ones who are barely getting by. It’s a pretty small community. Everyone knows everyone.”

An isolated community

Alvina Harrison, who works at Chaco Trade Center, said people here don’t have to travel two to three hours to Farmington, Gallup, and to Albuquerque for groceries and other things because the store has just about everything.

Harrison said outsiders might not understand people living in rural Diné communities like Pueblo Pintado, and perhaps don’t care about stories here.

But people here fight every day to survive, through fear and upheaval, and to provide for their families, so having a local store is essential.

“It does affect a lot of people,” Harrison said. “It’s convenient and has to stay open. (Don’t) judge us from a distance. It’s like saying to us, ‘We don’t care about you guys.’

“Even the Navajo Nation president, he hasn’t come out this way,” Harrison said in frustration. “This has been going on for almost a year!

“It’s not just affecting the store,” she said, “it’s also affecting the Navajo Nation, and he (Jonathan Nez) hasn’t come out this way. I don’t think he looks at us to see how his own Diné is being affected by this stuff.”

Harrison said while the pandemic is hard enough, this SNAP situation is even harder, especially when angry customers want to know why they can’t use their SNAP benefits at the store.

“We’ve (store employees) have been trying, on our end, to do all that we can,” Harrison said. “But there’s only so much we can do.”

And the situation is taking a toll on her mental health as she and her coworkers are trying to handle the problem.

“It is a lot,” she said. “Who wants to go to work like that? Some people would have quit a long time ago.

“(People) don’t understand what we have to deal with,” she said, “especially if you’re the cashier standing in front of people, and you have to explain it to them. Now, it’s not having the propane.”

Harrison added, “I grew up here. And throughout all the years I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen a Navajo Nation president out here. Now, with this going on, with the pandemic and everything else, it’s nothing. No help whatsoever.”

Presidential visits

Nez told the Navajo Times on Wednesday he has visited all 110 chapters, including the community of Pueblo Pintado more than once.

He said he helped with food and personal protection equipment-supply distributions in the community.

Nez said his last visit to Pueblo Pintado was on Aug. 30 when he helped at a backpack giveaway event for students at Pueblo Pintado Community School. He also visited the Pueblo Pintado Health Clinic where he heard from health-care workers fighting the pandemic.

Nez added that he meets with Eastern Navajo chapters such as Ojo Encino and Pueblo Pintado. His last visit with those chapters was on Jan. 4. The chapter leaders presented their priorities for the American Rescue Plan Act.

“The state of New Mexico oversees SNAP licenses and they have the sole authority to revoke the licenses,” said Jared Touchin, spokesman for the president’s office.

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