Trump administration says it needs to fight SNAP fraud, but the extent of the problem is unclear

By GEOFF MULVIHILL President Donald Trump s administration is talking tough about SNAP saying the administration s biggest food aid effort is riddled with fraud that must be stopped His appointees are looking at Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Activity from an enforcement perspective seeing fraud as a major and expensive complication perpetrated by organized criminal organizations individual recipients and retailers willing to break the laws for profit We know there are instances of fraud committed by our friends and neighbors but also transnational crime rings Jennifer Tiller a senior advisor to U S Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins commented in an interview Specific experts agree that SNAP fraud is a major predicament But there is little publicly available information showing the extent of it and others who research the undertaking are skeptical about the scale It you re spending billion on anything you re going to have particular leakage reported Christopher Bosso a professor of citizens strategy and politics at Northeastern University who published a book on SNAP FILE A sign is displayed for EBT for the USDA Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Campaign SNAP at the Friend s Meat Industry and Grocery Friday Nov in Miami AP Photo Lynne Sladky File The administration leans into fraud statements Of the billion spent on SNAP a year about billion goes to benefits and the rest to administrative costs About million people or in Americans receive SNAP benefits averaging about per person per month The number of recipients is in the same ballpark as the number of people in poverty million by the traditional measure and million under a more nuanced one also used by the federal governing body Under federal law largest part households must statement their income and basic information every four to six months and be fully recertified for SNAP at least every months Related Articles Trump sustains political attack on Rob Reiner in inflammatory post after his killing A Brown University novice survived being shot in high school Then came the proceeding shooter alerts New York is the th state identified to have improperly issued commercial driver s licenses to immigrants GOP chairman threatens Clintons with contempt of Congress in Epstein inquiry US accuses Rwanda of violating the peace deal as M rebels seize a key eastern Congo city The Trump administration has demanded that states turn over records on individual SNAP recipients including Social Defense numbers dates of birth and immigration status as part of its effort to root out fraud States with Republican governors plus North Carolina have complied Majority of led by Democrats are pushing back in court arguing that providing the information would violate recipients privacy The USDA says that from the records that have been shared it detected deceased people about of participants in those states receiving benefits and about people about receiving benefits in more than one jurisdiction The USDA has not made general detailed reports on the details and has not broken down the estimates by type of alleged fraud The department also hasn t answered questions about what portion of any improperly awarded benefits was really spent and how much sat unclaimed on EBT cards after recipients moved or died The department estimated in a letter to the states that have refused to turn over figures that the nationwide total combining fraud and undetected errors could be billion a year or more Democratic-led states responded in a letter last week that states already have systems to catch wrongdoing and that USDA isn t explaining how it s crunching the numbers Operation participants can be perpetrators or casualties of fraud There are a lot of forms of wrongdoing SNAP benefits are put on EBT cards that recipients swipe in stores like debit cards Organized crime groups put skimmers on EBT readers to get information used to make copies of the benefit cards and steal the allotments of recipients or to use stolen identity information to apply for benefits for fictitious people A Romanian man who was in the U S illegally pleaded guilty last year to skimming cards in California Administration say he took more than numbers over three years A USDA employee pleaded guilty this year to accepting bribes in exchange for providing registration numbers for EBT card readers placed illegally in several New York delis Functionaries revealed more than million passed through those terminals And three people were charged this year in Franklin County Ohio accused of using stolen benefits to order big quantities of strength drinks and candy apparently to resell it Mark Haskins who worked on USDA investigations from until leaving the department in August as branch chief of a special investigations unit mentioned there have been cases of retailers running similar operations Several states are barring using SNAP for specific junk food products with policies that kick in as soon as Jan Haskins also says specific legitimate recipients buy non-grocery items with SNAP benefits by persuading a store employee to ring up the wrong item generally one that costs more than what s being bought or to sell benefit cards He announced he thinks those forms of fraud are more costly than the ones run by organized criminal groups Haskins and Haywood Talcove CEO of LexisNexis Danger Solutions Cabinet which helps create fraud prevention strategies both believe fraud costs significantly more than the USDA s billion estimate The system is corrupt It doesn t need a fix here and there it necessities a complete overhaul disclosed Haskins who would like to see fewer retailers in the grid and participants having to reapply even if that makes it harder for qualified people to access benefits Advocates and researchers see a different system The USDA last published a document on SNAP fraud in It covered what happened in from through and unveiled that about of benefits were stolen from recipients accounts The cabinet replaced benefits that were stolen between Oct and Dec The value of replaced benefits over that time was million or about cents for every in SNAP benefits though that s held to be an undercount It s reports like those that lead advocates and academics who research SNAP to see fraud while troublesome as less than the massive complication the USDA makes it out to be Dartmouth College economist Patricia Anderson who studies food insecurity declared in an email that the maximum benefits for a family of four are about a month It really takes organized crime that is either stealing from the EBT cards or creating a lot of fake recipients out of whole cloth before the gain for the fraudster really starts to be worth it she disclosed Jamal Brown a -year-old food stamp participant who lives in Camden New Jersey explained he s witnessed people selling benefits to bodegas to get cash And he s had his benefits stolen by a skimmer He also mentioned he had to deal with benefits being cut off after being explained he missed an interview to recertify his need when a county welfare worker didn t call him as planned It s unfailingly something that goes wrong Brown explained unfortunately