Numi Financial Gets Rich off Poor People Being Jailed

FEATURING ARUN GUPTA – When you are arrested and jailed, you expect to be deprived of your freedom, but not of the cash in your pocket. A new investigative report by our correspondent Arun Gupta, for the Nation Magazine, has uncovered the insidious new practice of a growing number of county jails across the country of taking away people’s cash and returning it in the form of debit cards that have fees attached.

Gupta examined in particular, a fast growing California-based company called Numi Financial that won a contract with the Multnomah County Jail in Oregon. Jail authorities issue Numi debit cards to inmates after they are freed. Instead of the cash they expected to have in their pocket to help them catch a bus or cab home, they are faced with trying to use a debit card, often with poor instructions, and no warning that there are onerous fees attached to using the card, and even checking your balance.

Gupta’s investigation to him to the National Sheriffs Association conference as well as to Tijuana, where he found a large number of deported migrants whose money had been returned to them in the form of these debit cards.

Read his article in the Nation Magazine HERE.

Arun Gupta, an investigative journalist who has written for dozens of publications including the Washington Post, the Guardian, The Nation, and Salon. He writes regularly at teleSUR English. He was a founding editor of the Occupy Wall Street Journal. His article in the Nation Magazine is entitled, The Financial Firm That Cornered the Market on Jails.