Last fall, Barbara went online to check the balance on the electronic benefit transfer card she uses as a federal food assistance recipient. She was furious that more than $2,000 in benefits saved to help her and her four children had been lost.
“Everything was taken, just a few days before Thanksgiving,” the New York City resident recalled. “I’m with my kids right now and I’m trying to hold it in, and then the tears start coming down. They pat me on the back and tell me it’s okay. And I’m like, ‘What am I going to do?'”
Barbara, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym because of the sensitivity of the incident, is the victim of what anti-hunger advocates describe as a growing trend in the country: stealing food and cash benefits from EBT cards through skimming.
Skimming is the process where a thief attaches his own card reader to a retailer’s authorized reader, allowing fraudsters to steal information from a user’s card and later clone it. Since EBT cards do not have the microchip technology embedded in most credit and debit cards, equal especially vulnerable to such attacks.
“My tears started to fall. … [My kids are] pat me on the back and tell me it’s okay. And I was like, ‘What am I going to do?’”
– Barbara, victim of benefit theft
National data is sparse, but legal aid and anti-hunger The group and government officials agreed that 2022 will see a sharp increase in federal food aid. The Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that funds the card, issued a scam warning in October amid reports of skimming in several states.
Between July 2021 and September 2022, Californians reportedly lost $29.7 million in direct cash aid and $4.7 million in food benefits due to theft. Theft of cash benefits from EBT cards in the country from less than 1% in 2019-2020 to 1.7% in 2022-2023.
Massachusetts, which advocates say was also affected, reported $1.6 million stolen from more than 5,000 households between June and November 2022. In Maryland, more than $1.6 million was stolen between October 2022 and the end of February — compared to $ 1.8 million between November 2020 and the end of 2022.
The theft has left thousands of food aid recipients in dire straits – despite lawmakers vowing to help them. Late last year, Congress approved funding to restore some benefits to victims of SNAP skimming, but the money was little.
The Ghost Of 1996’s Welfare Bill
In addition to the reduced security of the EBT card compared to bank-issued credit or debit card, EBT cardholders have no legal recourse to recover what they lost after the thief.
In the 1996 welfare bill signed by President Bill Clinton at the urging of House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other congressional Republicans, EBT cardholders are specifically exempt from certain protections that limit losses for credit and debit cards.
“I teach a course on poverty law, and I’m repeatedly struck by how many of the current challenges we’ve seen in the public benefit system since welfare reform in the ’90s,” said Betsy Gwin, a senior attorney with Massachusetts Law. Reform Institute, a non-profit poverty law and policy program.
“It’s not surprising that it’s come so far back, but it’s quite frustrating to know that this has been going on for so long,” he said.
“I’m repeatedly struck by the many challenges we see today in our public benefits system going back to the welfare reforms of the ’90s.”
– Betsy Gwin, senior attorney with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute
A 1996 bill paved the way for states to replace paper food stamps with cards. Along with limiting fraud, the move aims to reduce the stigma around food assistance, as other shoppers may not know someone is using an EBT card or credit card to pay. But skimming victims now face the risk of public embarrassment again.
“Imagine the experience when you have to swipe your card and find out that there are only 70 cents left in the account, and you have to leave the whole cart of groceries in the checkout line,” Gwin said.
Advocates say the solution is relatively simple: allow full replacement of lost benefits, put microchips in benefit cards, and change the law to give EBT cardholders the same rights as other fraud cardholder victims.
Lawmakers haven’t gotten very far, but Congress decided to address the issue in December as part of the deal $1.7 trillion spending bill altogether. First, they make victims of SNAP skimming eligible for limited replacement benefits, if the fraud occurs on or after October 1.
He also said the USDA should require every state — as well as the District of Columbia, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands — to come up with a plan to issue replacement benefits and add security to the cards.
In early April, the department has approved only five plans. Two states, Maryland and Vermont, were eligible to make reimbursement with federal money in March in approved plans, while the other three states have projected a date to make reimbursement later this year.
A USDA spokesperson told HuffPost that the department is working to approve plans from all states and other agencies that administer SNAP benefits across the country.
“While some state plans can be approved quickly, others may require additional development and support [the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service] to ensure that the country implements and adheres to these guidelines properly,” the spokesperson said.
That slow pace is part of the worry of anti-hunger advocates.
Victims of skimming may have to ask relatives or buy things on credit in order to make ends meet, which may put them in a financial hole or dig deeper. Barbara, a welfare recipient in New York, said in March that she felt the lasting effects of the pre-Thanksgiving theft.
“I still owe $1,000 in rent. Well, I’m just counting myself slowly,” he said.
Until now, state plans that have been made public is a “good mix,” said Gina Plata-Nino, deputy director of SNAP at the anti-hunger advocacy group Food Research & Action Center.
Plata-Nino said there are concerns about the state’s proposed timeline for replacing lost benefits and the standard of proof skimming victims may have to meet, such as the obligation to file a police report.
Lawyers are also concerned about the level of lost benefits that victims can recover. The December law specifies that the benefit returned must be lower than the amount stolen or the value of the benefit provided for two months prior to the theft. This means that victims who have saved benefits and lost more than two months of value will be reimbursed with a lower amount.
Stacy Dean, the USDA’s deputy secretary of food, nutrition and consumer services, said the federal government is doing what it can to crack down on fraud.
“[The Food and Nutrition Service] continue to work with our state and federal partners, law enforcement, SNAP retailers and EBT processors to protect SNAP participants and their benefits and fight fraud,” Dean said in a statement to HuffPost.
‘Shouldn’t I go to This Store?’
Answer: The main thing supporters want for the state to provide EBT cards with microchips. Credit and debit cards with chips have seen rapid adoption in the US, after banks held off for years due to implementation costs.. Chip cards can still be cloned, but it is difficult to do so.
Plata-Nino said putting chips on EBT cards is a “cost issue” for state agencies that distribute SNAP benefits. For banks and other financial institutions, chip-embedded cards can cost between $1 and $2 each to make.
No state currently has an EBT card, although that may change. California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) has proposed it spending $76.5 million over three years to upgrade and improve the security of the EBT system.
and The Maryland legislature passed the bill there require an EBT card issued on or after October 1. have chips. It also requires card-making vendors to alert EBT cardholders of fraud and allows them to limit card transactions.
At a hearing in February, a Maryland Senate committee heard from several victims of SNAP skimming and other electronic benefit theft.
One witness, Andre Simmons of Baltimore, said he also saw SNAP benefits stolen during the holidays.
“It’s two days before Thanksgiving, and I’m planning this great Thanksgiving meal. It’s putting me under a lot of stress,” she said.
When he asked for help to solve the problem of theft of government food aid and it was difficult to replace ithe encountered another problem.
“A lot of people, families, can’t believe it’s happening,” he said.
“Imagine the experience when you have to swipe your card and find out that you only have 70 cents in your account, and you have to leave the entire cart of groceries in the checkout line.”
– Betsy Gwin of the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute
For Barbara, her theft experience left a psychological mark.
He now changes the personal identification number of his card regularly, and he has drastically cut down on the number of places where he uses the card. They also carefully check every ATM and point-of-sale terminal before using it.
Barbara said she still thinks she’s to blame when she used the card before the theft, like when she bought her fiance a cake.
“Those are the things I want here, should I not go to this store or not to the store?” she said.
He told HuffPost that he wants EBT cardholders to be treated the same as debit and credit cardholders.
“Everybody should be treated fairly – low-income, middle-class, upper-income – everybody.”