There was something very wrong with Jackie Kirks' food stamp card.
Last December, while standing in line at the checkout line at the cavernous Albertsons grocery store in Long Beach, Calif., Kirkus was told she didn't have enough money in her account to pay for food.
“That's not possible,” she told the cashier.
Kirkus, 70, knew she was saving a significant amount of money each month from the federal food assistance program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Until September, she was homeless, staying in motels for a week and sleeping in her car. She was supposed to buy food through a state program that allows adults over 60, people with disabilities and homeless people to use food stamps to buy meals at a discount. The program cost much less than buying groceries, so most of the SNAP money stayed in her account.
But the Albertsons cashier was adamant that Kirks only had $6 in her account. Alarm bells went off in her head as she emerged from the supermarket empty-handed except for a bottle of water and coffee creamer. She immediately called the state agency that oversees food benefits. Her heart sank when a caseworker explained that someone had accessed her card and maxed out the balance of more than $4,000.
People like Kirkus, who rely on public benefits such as food stamps, face relentless threats. Fraudsters are using illegally installed skimming devices to steal payment card data from unsuspecting victims who swipe their payment cards on devices at stores and ATMs. The criminal then uses that information to create a fake payment card and steal money from the victim's account.
Skimming schemes began to become more prevalent around 2022. Thieves target a variety of card-based payments, including credit and debit cards. Benefit programs that use payment cards are equally vulnerable. However, unlike bank-issued credit and debit cards, government-issued reward cards do not have fraud protection, limiting the credit or debit card holder's liability for fraudulent charges. .
The system has hit two welfare programs particularly hard: food stamps, which are payments to low-income families that can only be used to buy groceries, and cash assistance, which is an unconditional amount of money. Both are monthly programs, with money transferred to participants via payment cards called “Electronic Benefits Transfers” (EBTs).
EBT cards, unlike debit and credit cards, use basic payment technology and only have a magnetic stripe that contains your account number. By comparison, most credit and debit cards issued by banks now contain chips that act as miniature computers that use encryption to protect account information.
State agencies that administer benefits have not adopted chip technology, in part because federal law does not require it. Not only are chip cards more expensive than magnetic stripe cards, advocates said, but moving the multibillion-dollar benefit program to the new payment structure could be logistically difficult. .
“The lack of equal security for people with credit cards and people with EBT cards is shameful,” said Andrew Cazakez, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. “It is shameful that this inequality continues.”
The disconnect between industry standard payment protection and outdated EBT technology leaves EBT users vulnerable to digital theft. Here's how it works: Thieves sneak card readers, known as skimming devices, onto ATM card readers and store POS systems. When you swipe your card, the skimming device reads your account information and stores it on your magnetic stripe. Skimming devices are used in conjunction with hidden video cameras that capture PIN codes associated with accounts.
The skimming device can be installed in seconds. Security camera footage shows thieves inserting card skimmers into card readers and ATM interfaces, usually when cashiers are distracted or the bank's entrance is empty.
Once EBT card information is recorded, it can be encoded onto a card with a magnetic stripe. The duplicated card can be used for groceries or cash depending on the duplicated card. By calling the state's benefits hotline, the scammer can determine the amount of food stamps held in EBT and withdraw cash benefits at any of her ATMs.
This has significant costs, not only for beneficiaries but also for the general public. The federal government has spent at least $30 million reimbursing stolen benefits in the past year, according to the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the food stamp program.
After being skimmed, Kirkus went 10 days without buying groceries. One of her favorite foods is Whole Foods croissants, which remind her of Paris, where she moved in the 1990s. But after her food stamps were stolen, she couldn't buy them, and she couldn't get other staple foods either.
In the end, Kirkus was partially reimbursed for the stolen money, receiving about $580. Federal law caps the benefits skimming victims can receive at two months. While waiting for her refund, Kirkus was living on leftovers, groceries and occasional meals from a local Meals on Wheels program.
Other victims have had to eat canned food for days, go to food banks, skip meals or borrow money.
Jeanneth Chavez is a mother of two and receives cash assistance through an EBT card. She has lived in Los Angeles for many years, but in the spring of 2022, about $1,100 was stolen from her benefits in a transaction recorded as taking place in New York.
When Chavez realized he was out of money, he immediately started worrying about being evicted. She receives her benefits on the 2nd of each month and her landlord requires her to pay her rent within her first 3 days. She wanted to deal with this problem so she rushed to the local public service office, but she noticed that there was a long line of other women dealing with the exact same crisis.
“It was very shocking,” Chavez recalled. They were all given instructions on how to apply for a refund, but there was nothing else they could do in the short term. “The only resource they gave us was handing out little pamphlets in half houses for women and children in case of eviction,” she said.
Chavez eventually reached an agreement with the landlord, agreeing to pay an additional $100 in late fees. To buy diapers for her daughter, she went to her 100 yen store with her father and her father bought the diapers for her. Her baby developed diaper rash because her cheap diapers were of poor quality. Mr. Chavez was skimmed two more times that year. Now, she stays up late each month on the day her benefits are transferred and makes sure to change her PIN in the middle of the night to weed out any fraudsters who may have gotten hold of her card information. .
“Only then can I rest. Only then can I sleep well at night,” Chavez said. “I feel anxious for a few days until I receive the funds. There are very few people who rely on me and I don't want to be in that predicament. I don't have money to see my baby's face and buy diapers. How can I tell if it's possible?
The federal reimbursement program for food stamps is scheduled to end in the fall, leaving little recourse for skimming victims. When Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 to fund redemptions, the law mandated that the recovery of stolen benefits be limited to September 30, 2024. There are currently no federal plans to extend reimbursement beyond that date.
Some states have taken their own measures to protect welfare recipients. California and Oklahoma plan to pilot EBT chip cards this summer, which supporters hope will help protect benefits. While food stamps and cash assistance are federally funded programs, states have significant discretion in how they are administered.
Last year, Maryland passed a law that expands reimbursement for stolen food stamps and cash assistance, even if it means pulling it out of state funds. It's a model some proponents hope other states will adopt.
“States seem to think that just by putting benefits on a card, we've done our job,” said Michelle Salomon Madaio, senior attorney at the Homeless Representation Project in Baltimore. “If families who are eligible for benefits can't put money on their cards so they can actually access the benefits, it's as if they never got the benefits in the first place.”
Now back in Long Beach, Kirkus feels exposed after being scammed out of $4,000. I used to buy food for homeless people in my neighborhood. She had been homeless herself, and she knew what it was like to depend on the goodwill of others. “I was raised that way,” she said.
She doesn't do that anymore. Instead, she tries to use her SNAP card as sparingly as possible because she never knows when her information will be stolen again. She doesn't like to be too pessimistic and doubtful, but she doesn't feel like she has a choice. “It's not her way of life to be wary of anyone,” she said.