I recently heard some workers in a grocery store say something like "It's first of the month - Mother's Day!". I was curious so I asked what they were talking about.
They said that the first of the month is when people get money on their EBT card for food stamps. The mothers always hang around the front of the store to find people willing to exchange cash for food stamps at a 50% discount.
So if someone gets $300 in food stamps they go to the grocery store and buy someone $300 worth of food and that person pays the person with food stamps $150 in cash.
One way to prevent this abuse, or at least make it harder, is to distribute the money more than once a month. It's electronic so this shouldn't be hard.
Any carry over of unused benefits from week to week should be minimized.