State replaced $1 million in stolen Massachusetts SNAP benefits in 2023

LYNN, Mass. — Lily Kondratyuk said she was humiliated two years ago when she went to buy $200 worth of groceries at a local Market Basket and her EBT card was denied.

“I felt really sad and embarrassed,” Kondratyuk said. “The kids are waiting for the food and I didn’t know what to do.”

The Lynn mother of three later learned she was the victim of identity theft. She said someone got a hold of the information on her EBT card and made off with $700 in SNAP benefits.

“[They took] everything, the whole amount,” she said.

Criminals using skimming devices and phishing scams have been stealing money off EBT cards for years. According to 2023 data from the Dept. of Agriculture, 59,576 U.S. households were impacted by stolen SNAP benefits last year while the federal government spent $30 million replacing the stolen funds.

The Mass. Dept. of Transitional Assistance said it received 1,529 claims for stolen SNAP benefits in 2023. The state helped reimburse many of those victims, using federal funding to replace $1 million in stolen benefits.

“We are still seeing it as a persistent issue that some clients are still experiencing,” said Birabwa Kajubi, Associate Commissioner for Quality Management at the Mass. Dept. of Transitional Assistance. “The most immediate action step is for clients to change their pin. That’s if they believe their information has been compromised.”

DTA has a reporting section on its website here if you think you’re the victim of theft.

To protect your benefits, DTA says:

• Change your EBT card PIN before each time you get your DTA benefits
• If you get TAFDC or EAEDC, you can call your case manager to ask about having your benefits deposited to your bank account
• Never provide your personal information, EBT card number, or Personal Identification Number (PIN) to unidentified callers, or to a link provided via text or email

“It is despicable and it is unconscionable that there are groups of people stealing money from families on SNAP,” said Vicky Negus, policy advocate with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, a non-profit legal services organization in Boston. Negus said she’s been in contact with hundreds of Massachusetts residents who couldn’t feed their families because they were victims of theft.

“One mom called me on my cell phone at 10:30 p.m. sobbing. She was in the checkout line and trying to figure out what to do because she was buying last-minute food for her kids and the dollars she was expecting to use had been stolen,” Negus said.

EBT cards do not have chip or tapping technology, so cardholders can only swipe their cards at checkout, leaving them wide open to credit card skimmers. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon democrat, introduced a bill in March that would require the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture to add fraud-resistant chip technology to EBT cards.

“Families are vulnerable to theft because they have been made a second-class consumer group in the checkout line,” Negus said. “And until that is fixed, they will continue to be at risk.”

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