Nutrition Assistance: USDA Should Comprehensively Assess Benefit Theft Prevention Measures States Are Implementing
The report reviews the scope and methods of SNAP benefit theft—including card skimming, cloning, phishing, and algorithmic attacks—and examines the effectiveness of state and federal countermeasures.
It details ongoing modernization projects such as chip-enabled EBT cards, mobile payments, and transaction-blocking pilots, while identifying challenges related to costs, data gaps, and uneven adoption of security tools. GAO concludes that without a comprehensive USDA assessment, states may remain vulnerable to fraud and urges the agency to evaluate prevention efforts across all 53 SNAP jurisdictions to strengthen program integrity and safeguard recipients’ access to food.
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