Christmas comes early to Louisiana

From Newsmax:

Shoppers cleared the shelves at two Louisiana Walmart stores over the weekend when a glitch in the government's Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) system allowed welfare recipients to use their debit-style food stamps cards to buy unlimited goods without the usual spending cap.

Managers at Walmart stores in Mansfield and Springhill, La., were forced to call police Saturday after people realized the glitch in the EBT system and rushed to load up carts with as many items as they could carry, CBS affiliate KSLA reported.

"It was worse than any black Friday," Springhill Police Chief Will Lynd said of the frenzied shopping scene.

The glitch, which was reportedly caused during a routine maintenance test by EBT card servicer Xerox Corp., made it so cashiers could not view card limits, allowing customers the ability to spend limitlessly.

"We did make the decision to continue to accept EBT cards during the outage so that they could get food for their families," Walmart representative Kayla Whaling told KSLA. She claimed that Walmart was "fully engaged and monitoring the situation and transactions during the outage."

The system began working properly around 9 p.m. Saturday, leading people to abandon their overflowing shopping carts in the aisles.