An undercover video from conservative activist James O’Keefe shows corporate “Obama phone” distributors handing out the devices to even those who ask if they can be sold for drug money.
The video was taken in May, the Daily Mail reported.
The phone program was aimed at supplying poverty-level Americans with a means of applying for jobs, contacting emergency responders and soliciting assistance for their children. It’s a project of the Federal Communications Commission that’s grown considerably in the past couple years; in 2012, its expenses hit $2.19 billion, the Daily Mail said.
The phones aren’t provided in order to net the recipient cash, yet Mr. O’Keefe’s video suggests that oversight in just that area is sorely lacking. In the video, an actor working for Mr. O’Keefe’s Project Veritas approaches a free-phone distribution site in Philadelphia and asks the worker: “Once you guys give me this phone, it’s my phone? I can, like, sell it and stuff?”
The worker said, as the Daily Mail reported, “Whatever you want to do with it.”
And the actor: “So I’m [going to] get some money for heroin,” the Daily Mail reported.
And the worker: “Hey, I don’t judge.”
The two companies featured in the video were Stand Up Wireless and TerraCom Wireless, the Daily Mail said.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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