Targeting Food Stamp Fraud Is Good Politics and Policy
On Tuesday, the Department of Justice charged four men with using 115 stolen identities across several states, including Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island, to fraudulently obtain more than $1 million in benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. (RELATED: Washington’s Fraud Factory)
Bulk purchases of pork, beef, and chicken for El Primo Restaurant in Leominster, Massachusetts, were paid for by the state’s taxpayers and those of Rhode Island.
It’s not a novel story. Nationwide, taxpayers are footing the bill for fraudsters. According to the SNAP Replacement of Stolen Benefits Dashboard, the total value of replaced stolen benefits for the first quarter of fiscal year 2025 was over $100 million. (RELATED: Minnesota Welfare Scandal Is the Fraud Warning Americans Finally Noticed)
There are microimpacts to stolen benefits that can be overlooked when we’re talking about figures like $100 million over three months, or the $250 million food and nutrition scam involving Feeding Our Future in Minnesota. Still, for Americans like Sheria Robertson, SNAP fraud means “Me and my son are not able to eat.” In an interview with WALB News, Robertson recounts her shock at seeing her food stamps being used “in Brooklyn, New York, at a BJ’s.” (RELATED: Some Obvious Truths From Minnesota)
If more than 10 percent of that funding is stolen, taxpayers can reasonably point the finger at those administering the benefits.
Inexplicably, Mark Haskins, chief investigator for the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Services, admits the USDA doesn’t really know how much is stolen in a given year. “It could be as high as 12 billion dollars a year, could be more,” he says. Federal SNAP spending totaled $99.8 billion in fiscal year 2024.
If more than 10 percent of that funding is stolen, taxpayers can reasonably point the finger at those administering the benefits.
With “affordability” on the minds of millions of Americans, cases like Arlasa Davis, a longtime USDA employee involved in a $66 million fraud scheme, serve as evidence that the program is broken. In 2024, 34 percent of U.S. adults reported experiencing financial fraud or a scam. Those earning less than $50,000 per year, a group most likely to be on food stamps, were also the most likely to experience fraud or scams.
Since states are responsible for issuing benefits and certifying SNAP eligibility, they are ultimately accountable for security as well. (RELATED: Is Minnesota or California the Fraud Capital of America?)
After an executive order last March by President Donald Trump targeting waste, fraud, and abuse by “eliminating information silos,” federal agencies sought access to state databases linked to federal programs, including SNAP. Following the president’s orders, the USDA sent a letter to state agency directors asking for “unfettered access to comprehensive data” of their SNAP programs to improve its ability to “detect overpayments and fraud.”
To date, 28 states have complied with USDA’s demands, according to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins. The 22 states that declined, as well as Washington, D.C., took their opposition a step further, suing the USDA to block it from demanding SNAP data or withholding funds from states that refused to comply.
USDA official Shiela Corle told the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California that the data shared has helped find fraud that had “gone undetected before FNS obtained data of the kind that plaintiff states are withholding.”
Ignoring guidance from the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Services, the majority of states have failed to follow up on simple recommendations like issuing secure EBT chip cards. Alabama and California, two states with high levels of SNAP fraud, are the only ones to issue the cards, although seven others plan to join them.
Of course, it’s difficult to save $10 billion by issuing new cards alone; real reform will require additional efforts, such as changing the federal-state cost-sharing arrangement or targeting retailers that turn a blind eye to obvious cases of SNAP fraud.
Security measures such as automatically blocking potentially fraudulent transactions made outside a recipient’s home state, locking cards, or requiring frequent PIN changes — long used by the private sector — are now slowly gaining adoption among state agencies.
Considering over 42 million people nationwide depend on monthly SNAP benefits, it’s entirely reasonable to expect each state to make the effort necessary to guarantee benefits are exclusive to those who are eligible.
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