Page 36 of Don’t Say a Word (Angelhart Investigations #2)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Margo Angelhart

Detective Jessica Oliver was younger than I expected—under thirty—with a petite build, short dark hair and large blue eyes. Cherub cute. Definitely didn’t look like a cop.

She walked straight toward me and said, “Margo?”

“That’s me. Thanks for coming, Jessica.”

“Call me Jessie,” she said and slid into the booth across from me. “I remember your brother. I had my shield for about a year when he left the force.”

“You made detective young.”

She laughed. “Maybe, but I became a cop when I was nineteen. My grandpa was a deputy sheriff in Pima County, my dad was a US marshal and my mom worked in the Secret Service, financial crimes. Which is what I was interested in after hearing some of her stories. My sister is currently in the DEA training academy, and it’s my brother who betrayed the family,” she added lightly.

“What did he decide to do?”

“Owns a business. Installs and repairs HVAC systems. He’s going to make a shit-ton more money than all of us put together, but that’s Jimmy.

Barely graduated from high school, but he can fix anything.

” She leaned forward. “Fortunately, he recognizes his limitations and hired a good accountant who happens to be my husband.”

“You have an interesting family.”

“I wouldn’t trade them.”

I liked her. Her family reminded me of my own.

Scotty, the bartender, came over to our table. He’d worked here eight years ago when I did, and he hadn’t changed, except maybe a little more gray threaded through his dark hair.

“Usual, Margo?”

“Yep,” I said. To Jessica I said, “On me, beer, food, both.”

“My husband’s cooking, so I’ll just take a beer. Harp?”

Scotty nodded, went back to the bar.

“Come here a lot I take it?” Jessica said.

“I used to work here while getting my PI business off the ground.”

“My husband and I used to come in here all the time when we lived nearby, but we bought a house in Anthem a couple years ago.”

“You commute all the way downtown?” Forty-five minutes—longer if she worked regular business hours.

“Sacrifices,” she said. “We’re trying to start a family and Anthem is a nice community, good schools. My husband works from home, likes the quiet. And I can work out of the Black Mountain precinct half the time.” Black Mountain was the northernmost substation for Phoenix PD.

Scotty came back with Jessie’s Harp and my Guinness.

“So,” Jessie said after taking a sip, “Rick says you want to pick my brain about EBT fraud and scams. Pick away. I’m yours for the next thirty minutes.”

“What types of cases do you investigate?”

“I primarily investigate criminal fraud of city and state resources. The last major case I wrapped up was working with the AG’s office on a Medicaid fraud scam.”

“How does that work?”

She laughed lightly. “In a nutshell? An individual buys or steals a list of Medicaid recipients and then charges Medicaid for services not provided.”

“A doctor?”

“Not always. In this case, it started with a receptionist in a provider’s office.

She copied all the Medicaid patients’ records, then with her mother, opened a mental health clinic.

It started during COVID when there was far less oversight.

They were so profitable they kept it going for years before we shut them down. ”

“I don’t understand. They were ambulance chasers for mental health services?”

“No. There was no actual clinic. They filed false Medicaid claims for patients they never saw for services they never provided.”

“How do you catch things like that?”

“It’s not easy. Nearly ten percent of payments a year—over one hundred billion dollars—are for improper payments.

People who don’t qualify. Paying more benefits than allowed.

Double payments. Paying landlords directly and sending the same benefit to the recipient.

I could go on and on. For me, I get frustrated because there are people who need help, so when I can stop someone from committing actual fraud, it feels good. ”

“How’d you catch the mother-daughter team?”

“They got greedy. If you keep your scams on the down-low, it’s next to impossible to catch you—especially since audits are limited and rare.

But they added more patients to their fictional list, and one of those individuals was getting real psychiatric services.

That doc ran the patient’s records, saw something hinky, and alerted the AG’s office.

My team was brought in, and it took us six months of interviews and legwork to wrap up those women with a pretty bow for the prosecution. ”

“Neither was even a doctor?”

“Nope. There are cases like this all over the country. Recently in California, a husband and wife applied for housing benefits using stolen identities and pocketed more than half a million dollars. In Louisiana, a guy ran a similar scam as my mother-daughter team, buying instead of stealing a Medicaid list and charging for services never provided. There are doctors who pad all services for every Medicaid patient, or charge for tests and procedures never done.”

Jessie leaned back. “Does that help?”

I nodded. “I knew fraud was out there, but other than a couple civil insurance scams, I haven’t worked fraud cases.

Last year a private insurer hired me to determine if a loss was legit.

Someone claimed a bunch of jewelry was stolen from their house, insured for over two million bucks.

But the insurance company was skeptical, hired me to investigate.

The wife really thought it had been stolen, but the husband actually sold the jewels to pay off gambling debts he didn’t want his wife to find out about, then filed the fraudulent report. ”

“And he probably didn’t even go to prison,” Jessie said.

“Nope. But he didn’t get the insurance money, and his wife divorced and sued him. I testified for her, she ended up with a nice settlement. In the end, justice was mostly served.”

I sipped my Guinness, considered my approach, decided on straightforward. Jessie was knowledgeable and had so far been open.

“Have you investigated EBT fraud?”

“Sure. Lots of scams out there, both to game the system and to steal benefits from those who are eligible.”

“What are the most common?”

“Fraudulently applying for benefits, usually under a false identity. Nearly a third of all SNAP fraud is because of false identities. I nailed one guy who ran a scam filing for dead people—literally they die, he applies for benefits, and the system is so behind no one knows the person is dead. He gets the EBT cards, sells them for cash. A lot of people fraudulently apply when they aren’t eligible, and many apply under multiple names and socials.

There’s also skimmers out there who pull the money off EBT cards like people do with credit card readers.

That’s about twenty percent of the fraud, and it pisses me off because these people are literally stealing from people who can’t afford to lose those benefits.

They get the benefits back, but that costs the system.

It’s a mess. I do what I can.” Jessie sipped her Harp and munched on the complimentary peanuts.

“What about using an EBT card to pay for ineligible goods?”

“Like alcohol and cigarettes? Happens all the time. The store has to be in on it—they have a UPC code for an eligible item like canned food and ring that up, but sell them a pint of vodka. It’s more common for someone to sell their card for cash, use the cash to buy, but I’ve fined a couple stores.

Usually it’s just one employee, but management needs to be more diligent. ”

“What about drugs?” I said. It had been running around in my head why Elijah was taking pictures of people coming out of the Cactus Stop without bags. A few people, sure. Cigarettes get stuffed in pockets. Lottery tickets in wallets. But the numbers seemed high.

“Our DEB unit has caught scammers buying up EBT cards from the homeless, who use the money for drugs and alcohol, then file for a new card saying it was lost, and the process starts all over again.”

“What about a store who, like ringing up food for an alcohol purchase, rings up food for an illegal drug purchase?”

Jessie stared at me, all serious, and said, “What do you know?”

“I don’t know anything. Just throwing ideas out.”

“Very specific ideas,” she said pointedly. I kept my poker face. I had no problem sharing my theory with her, but I also didn’t want the police to jump in before I had answers about Elijah’s death.

“Did you see something that made you suspicious?” Jessie asked.

“Yes,” I said. “And, if over the course of my investigation I can find hard proof, I’ll turn it over to you. But for now, it’s just a gut feeling, so I don’t want to blow my own case.”

“Which is?”

Carefully, I said, “A teenager died of a drug overdose. I’m tracking his last days, and I think he may have seen something illegal where he worked, which may have led to his death. It’s just a theory based on limited information, but I need to prove or disprove before I can move on.”

“Well,” Jessie said after a moment, “I’ll say this.

I have heard of instances where a business was involved in fraudulent EBT use.

I have even heard isolated cases where an employee was dealing drugs out of a business.

A few years back at one of the major grocery stores, a cashier ran the scam, but her manager caught on pretty quick.

We put her under surveillance, built a case, arrested her.

I haven’t seen this sort of operation on a large scale. ”

“Have you or your team ever investigated the Cactus Stop?”

Her eyes widened. “Not even close. In fact, the owner contacts law enforcement on a regular basis about crime in and around his businesses.”

“Ramos,” I said.

“Yes, Manny Ramos. He opened the first Cactus Stop more than twenty-five years ago, built one store into more than a dozen. If you know of any of his employees who may be involved in a crime, you need to let me know. He’ll help us take bad staff down. He’s done it before.”

“All right,” I said, having no intention of sharing the information yet, “if I uncover anything specific, I’ll let you know. I don’t want to bring down the hammer on anyone who’s innocent.”

“Ramos doesn’t want drugs on his property any more than we do.”

“How would a scam like that work?” I asked. “I understand ringing up food and giving them drugs or alcohol, but wouldn’t there be an inventory discrepancy?”

“On a small scale, it’s easy to make disappear.

A good auditor—like my husband—could find it if he had access to all the books and receipts, but a good scammer can falsify books.

On a large scale? Quarterly records would be off, the bookkeeper would notice large discrepancies and likely trigger an audit.

So if it was a mom-and-pop shop and they were in on it, easy to cook the books and get away with something like you’re suggesting.

But a chain like the Cactus Stop? Nearly impossible. ”

“But if it was just one employee, it would be considered small scale?”

“Small if he was having maybe six to ten of these transactions a week.”

“So not a dozen or more a day.”

“That would create a paper trail at inventory time. In the short term? A sneaky employee could destroy the goods he pretended to sell, and could probably get away with it for a while. But in my experience, people get greedy. They want more, like the mother and daughter Medicaid scammers. And remember, if they’re using an EBT card, the employee isn’t going to get the money—that goes to the store.

So I don’t know what his motive would be.

Selling drugs for cash behind the counter?

That definitely happens a lot more than you might think, and DEB would take lead in that investigation. ”

“That helps,” I said.

“Are you going to share more?”

“I promise, if I learn more, I’ll share.”

“Fair enough,” Jessie said and drained her beer. “Thanks for the beer. I should get going. It was nice to meet you.”

“You too,” I said and watched her walk out.

I was starving so ordered a plate of Irish sliders. While I ate and finished my beer, I considered what might be happening at the Cactus Stop.

EBT transactions went to the store. So either I was wrong about the scam and nothing was going on at the Cactus Stop, or the staff was selling drugs for cash, or whoever ran the business end of the Cactus Stop was involved.

Elijah must have thought something illegal was happening, or why else would he sit outside the store for hours at night taking pictures of people coming and going?

Maybe he was trying to identify the specific person involved, but didn’t know where he should focus his attention.

I was at a loss, but I couldn’t ignore the photos or what Elijah had been doing in the weeks before he died.

Ramos should be very interested if there was any sort of EBT fraud going on in one of his Cactus Stop locations. But I didn’t have proof, and I wouldn’t go to him without solid evidence. Still, he was in a better position than me to find answers.

I called Tess. If anyone could dig up dirt on Cactus Stop employees, it was my sister.

But reaching out to Ramos before I had proof? I needed to sleep on that.