Urgent SNAP warning as recipients risk losing $555 MILLION if system doesn’t change
Urgent SNAP warning as recipients risk losing $555 MILLION if system doesn’t change
https://www.the-sun.com/money/16086808/snap-warning-recipients-risk-losing-money/
Publish Date: 2026-03-15 09:24:00
Source Domain: www.the-sun.com
A MAJOR warning has been issued over SNAP theft, with lawmakers racing to stop hundreds of millions of dollars from vanishing from benefit cards.
The push comes as Congress weighs a new bill aimed at overhauling the security of the cards millions of Americans use to buy food.
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SNAP could lose about $555 million to fraud unless the system is modernisedCredit: Alamy
The bill would also force USDA to update its cybersecurity regulations for SNAP cardsCredit: Getty
A USDA inspector general report said SNAP could lose about $555 million to fraud unless the system is modernised.
That figure combines $322 million already replaced between October 2022 and December 2024 with another $233 million the watchdog forecast could be stolen in fiscal 2025 and 2026.
At the center of the fix is the Enhanced Cybersecurity for SNAP Act.
The bill would push states to move away from old magnetic-stripe EBT cards and toward chip-enabled cards that are harder to clone.
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Lawmakers say the current cards are highly exposed to skimming, a scam in which thieves copy card data from the stripe and make duplicates to drain benefits.
The USDA watchdog said the Food and Nutrition Service has not required states to adopt security standards strong enough to detect and prevent SNAP benefit theft.
New York lawmakers are among the bill’s leading…
