A Crete store owner and an associate pleaded no contest Monday to felony theft charges for a scheme to buy food stamp card numbers from homeless people in Lincoln.
Juan Garivay, 48, bought the card numbers from people at the Lincoln City Mission, then gave them to the owner of Super Latina Store, Jose Banos, 40, who manually entered them in his credit card machine for hundreds of dollars of grocery purchases that never happened, Nebraska State Patrol Investigator Cory Townsend said in court records.
The two split the money.
Townsend said four men identified Garivay as the man to whom they sold their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and pin numbers. The card numbers later were used at Super Latina for more than $100.
Townsend said the two men had been running fictitious EBT transactions at the store as far back as 2010, Banos getting $20 for each $100 in phony purchases.
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Banos and Garivay both are set to be sentenced in Lancaster County District Court in April.
