Who's Stealing New Yorkers' SNAP Benefits?

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we'll talk about why so many New Yorkers who rely on SNAP benefits keep getting scammed out of their EBT funds and why the state has been slow to respond. If you have an EBT card, an electronic benefit transfer card on which you receive SNAP, there's a good chance you woke up one day recently to find your funds zeroed out, maybe in transactions at stores in states who've never even stepped foot in. It's happening on a remarkable scale.
A recent survey of SNAP recipients citywide found that nearly a third of them said they had had benefits stolen in this way in just the past three years. And unlike a stolen credit card, when a scammer drains an EBT account, no bank steps in to make the victim whole, nor does the government. The money and the food it was supposed to buy are just gone. That's because as our next guest reports, EBT cards were never built with the basic protections we take for granted on our debit and credit cards. Meanwhile, overseas crime rings have figured out exactly how to exploit that gap. And state and federal officials have mostly been pointing fingers at each other over who should pay to fix it, and who should pay the people who've already lost their benefits. Rosa Goldensohn, contributing writer for The City Reporter, has a huge story on this fraud that's already won at least two journalism awards and she joins us now to talk about it. Rosa, welcome back to WNYC.

**Rosa Goldensohn** (1:37)
Thank you, Brian. I think it's just one award, but thank you.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:39)
One award, okay. Well, maybe it's one award I read twice. And listeners, you can help us report this story. Has your EBT card ever been drained without your knowledge? What happened when you tried to get help? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.
Do you know the basic numbers in New York City of how many people do get EBT cards, do get SNAP benefits? A lot of people, right?

**Rosa Goldensohn** (2:09)
Yeah, it's 1.7 million New Yorkers, which is about 20% of the city. It's an even higher share of households, about a third of households. And that includes half a million children.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:22)
So that's a lot of New Yorkers at risk. Who is scamming those folks out of those benefits?

**Rosa Goldensohn** (2:29)
Well, so according to the Secret Service, which investigates counterfeit crimes, that's why they're involved in this.
The sort of cyber criminal fraudsters at the very top of this who are making, they're producing devices that suck up these numbers. And they are coming out of very organized, transnational crime rings that are originating from Eastern Europe. There have been arrests of Romanian nationals. But these are very hierarchical organizations. So you might have runners at the very bottom who are, you know, have no idea who they're working for. And the money is getting funneled up to the people who are making the big, big money, which is actually a very small group of people, according to the Secret Service.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:28)
And how are they doing it?

**Rosa Goldensohn** (3:31)
So they create these gadgets, these devices that go on little point of sale terminals, like you use your credit card on, and they slip on really quickly. They glue on or slip in, like in a matter of seconds. And they match exactly what a point of sale terminal looks like. So it's not something you just kind of mock up at your house, right? It's something that's produced.
And then those devices send wirelessly or cash inside them. The information of people who swipe, they get the numbers, the card numbers, and the pin numbers for anyone who uses them. Now that's not just EBT users, that's anybody who swipes with a card like that. But EBT users then are especially vulnerable to being defrauded.

**Brian Lehrer** (4:23)
Let me see if I understand. Are you saying people are going from store to store in New York City and maybe elsewhere, and clandestinely inserting these things into the card readers at the cashiers?

**Rosa Goldensohn** (4:38)
That's exactly right, yeah. And this often can be a two-person operation where one person's a little distracting, or they put a big box on the conveyor belt or something, and the other person just quickly slips it on. They obviously have already sussed the place out. They know exactly what the little sales terminal looks like, and they're replacing something on the top of it or inside of it that is undetectable to the naked eye, pretty much.

**Brian Lehrer** (5:01)
How do they get away with it? Are they paying the stores a kickback in many cases? No.