Feb 25 2025

EBT Scams on the Rise – California Losing $100M Annually

Posted Feb 25, 2025 by Martin Armstrong

The California Department of Social Services admits it has lost $439 million in stolen Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) benefits since 2021. The program noticed a $100,000 monthly loss halfway through 2021, but did nothing. Now, the state is losing $10 million each month due to EBT theft.

The Department of Social Services is still investigating how widespread this theft has become but the trend is rising. In January of this year, $14,181,029 in taxpayer provided EBT funds simply vanished. Scammers can access account information in a variety of ways without gaining access to the actual EBT card. Skimming and phishing scams have been on the rise.

“EBT theft cruelly robs vulnerable individuals of the public benefits they are legally entitled to,” said District Attorney Hochman. “In addition to directly taking critical financial assistance away from children, families, and the elderly, public assistance fraud steals from taxpayers. Our Office will continue to vigilantly investigate and prosecute these cases and hold offenders fully accountable for their criminal actions. We are also working closely with victims and the LA County Department of Public Social Services to return the stolen benefits.”

Arrests are rare as these fraudulent transactions can be hard to trace but punishments are harsh. One such scammer in California faced 10 counts of felony identity theft, three counts of felony grand theft, and one misdemeanor charge of obstructing a law enforcement officer after stealing thousands through skimming practices. He now faces up to 10 years in prison.

Over 3 million people in the state receive EBT cards through SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). No state can afford to lose $100 million per year due to fraud. This is something that needs to be reassessed at the federal level as EBT fraud occurs everywhere. Washington state reported lost $5.5 million to EBT card scams in 2024, for example. A recent police sweep of the DC area found 27 skimming devices, preventing an estimated loss of $7.2 million.

Did I mention that EBT cards do not have chips? Every bank forced users to switch to chip technology years ago, but the US government, per usual is behind. Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and John Fetterman (D-Pa.) have been trying to push through the Enhanced Cybersecurity for SNAP Act that would phase out swipe-only cards and provide recipients with additional information to manage their accounts. Yet, the act would also reimburse recipients with 100% of stolen funds which could lead to different forms of fraud.

Stealing from the poor is abhorrent behavior. A survey of 10,000 welfare recipients found that over half had little to no understanding of phishing or skimming scams. Around 87% reported taking some action to prevent their cards. A second survey of 1,700 EBT scam victims revealed that 44% were forced to borrow money elsewhere or go into debt, 53% became food insecure, and half of those victims have no idea how their funds were stolen. Only 55% of theft victims were reimbursed for their stolen funds. Something must be done to protect not only the welfare recipients but the taxpayers who may be forced to fund EBT fraud.

Feb 3 2025

Anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles

Posted originally on Rumble By Bannon’s War Room on: Feb 3, 2025, at 12:05 am EST

Feb 3 2025

Thousands of anti-ICE protesters block surface streets in downtown Los Angeles

Posted originally on Rumble By Bannon’s War Room on: Feb 2, 2025, at 9:41 pm EST

Feb 3 2025

CalExit

Posted originally on Feb 3, 2025 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: My question is about your forecast that the separation of the United States would begin with California and that 2022 would be the turn in your model. Please explain how you came to the 2022 target and how this separation will develop.

DVS

2025_02_01_14_26_06_Calexit_plan_to_divorce_California_from_US_is_getting_a_second_chance

ANSWER: The target 2022 was 172 years (2 x 8.6) from joining the USA in 1850 after the 1846 California’s Bear Flag Rebellion. However, the model turned up in 2018, when California first proposed exiting the USA because of Trump.

We warned that the Economic Confidence Model peak of 2015.75 was the peak in government. Trump won against all odds and forecasts in 2016, and within 2 years of that, California was proposing to separate from the United States.

It was 1846, the starting point for the separation movement 172 years later (2018). It was 1846 when the California Republic was a rebellion breakaway territory from Mexico, which lasted for 25 days between June 14th and July 9th, 1846. It was an area north of San Francisco. Ironically, it only involved 33 illegal American immigrants who had entered without official permission. They staged a rebellion against the Mexican government over the issue that they had not been allowed to buy or rent land and were threatened with deportation. Today, California wants to be a sanctuary state for everyone other than Americans. This is a 180-degree opposite turn, which seems to be cyclical – i.e., bull vs bear market.

Mexican officials were concerned about the prospect of war with the United States, so they were trying to prohibit the migration of Americans to retain their power and culture. The rebels created a flag named “California Republic” and raised it. It has always been a question of whether they did this purposefully to seize California. The insurgents elected military officers, but no civil structure was ever created. Their flag featured a California grizzly bear, which gave the name Bear Flag Rebellion.

Three weeks later, on July 5th, 1846, the Republic’s 100 to 200 men military grew much like Ukraine suddenly raising an army. The Bear Flag Rebellion ended on July 9th when, conveniently, the U.S. Navy raised the United States flag. Did the US plan to seize California and send these 33 guys into the area to start the rebellion so the USA did not appear to be invading Mexico and starting a full-fledged war? From 1846 onward, the U.S. military began occupying California. They then joined the union in 1850.

It was November 2022 when Trump announced he would run in 2024, which increased the CalExit movement in 2022. This has improved tremendously. The joke is that Davin Nusom wants to become the king of California.

2025_02_01_13_41_30_Calexit_under_Trump_2.0_is_a_possibility_supporters_say

Just as the people in the Donbas are Russian and have nothing in common with Ukrainians who just hate them, they should be allowed to separate. Under that same reasoning, California as a whole has nothing in common with the majority of the country. They, too, should be allowed to separate. The United States will break apart in any event, most likely as soon as 2029, if not more post-2032. As I have explained in the tariffs pieces I have written, Trump will actually go down in history as Herbert Hoover of the 21st century.

Jan 29 2025

Sen. Josh Hawley Breaks Down DeepSeek, Big Tech Oligarchs, And Senate Confirmation Hearings

Posted originally on Rumble By Bannon’s War Room on: Jan 28 at 6:00 pm EST

Jan 29 2025

DeepSeek Launch

Posted originally on Jan 29, 2025 by Martin Armstrong

It was only a matter of time before an innovative mind created the next mainstream AI tool to compete with ChatGPT. In a massive step toward AI advancement, Liang Wenfeng of China launched DeepSeek, an open-source large language models (LLM) intended to compete if not one day overshadow ChatGPT. The launch immediately wiped $1 trillion off the US stock exchange and the tech competition between China and the US is coming to a head.

ChatGPT is run by OpenAI. Its creation marked the dawn of a new way of interacting with the internet and accessing information. Users can ask AI to instantaneously perform actions and it is reshaping the way the world operated. People have created businesses based on ChatGPT. There have been countless warnings of AI replacing human jobs. Governments are still uncertain how to regulate these services and the data they pull from users. Of course, countless services like ChatGPT have launched in recent years, but DeepSeek may be the next best alternative.

Wenfeng hired all the top minds graduating from Chinese universities and paid them top dollar to create DeepSeek for a fraction of what it took to create ChatGPT. OpenAI’s GPT-4, launched in 2023, cost $100 million to develop; DeepSeek-R1 began with a $6 million investment.

Semiconductor chips are shaping the tech race. It takes semiconductor chips to operate these AI programs and that has been an ongoing problem for American companies. Chinese companies do not have such problems. There is much speculation that ChatGPT did not require the estimated 10,000 GPUs and 3,500 NVIDIA servers. Nonetheless, DeepSeek is operating on less. Now, DeepSeek has around 50,000 NVIDIA H100 chips but they cannot speak about the matter due to US export controls.

President Trump stated that DeepSeek is a reminder that American companies need to be “laser focused” on competing with China. Everyone is impressed at the low operating costs. “Instead of spending billions and billions, you’ll spend less, and you’ll come up with, hopefully, the same solution,” Trump noted. Some US politicians are already calling for a ban. “The U.S. cannot allow CCP models such as DeepSeek to risk our national security and leverage our technology to advance their AI ambitions. We must work to swiftly place stronger export controls on technologies critical to DeepSeek’s AI infrastructure,” Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., the chair of the House Select Committee on China, said Monday.

Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd, owned and funded by hedge fund High-Flyer has inserted $2 trillion into the US markets at the time of this writing. Critics claim that DeepSeek censors available information based on what the CCP will and will not permit. Still, investors seem extremely bullish on DeepSeek, which has already surpassed ChatGPT as the most downloaded AI app on the Apple app store.