Last July, 73-year-old Lance Johnson moved into Salt Lake City retirement community Friendship Manor after spending 30 years living on the streets.
He started receiving food stamps in January, after a complicated application process helped along by his friend, Griffin Zody, 25. The two met while Johnson was unhoused and first struck up a friendship over coffee.
But two months after Johnson started getting food stamps, he hit a roadblock. On the morning of March 11, he found his Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) account, where he receives food stamp dollars, had been drained.
The money had been correctly deposited into his account at midnight, but by 5 a.m. that day, all the funds that he had been allocated for March — along with other dollars that had rolled over from previous months — were gone.
“They were really strict in approving us, and so we got the impression that it was a very secure system,” Johnson said. “I saw my account had been zeroed out. And then Griffin got on the website and saw that somebody on the East Coast in New York was making purchases with my account.”
Johnson quickly learned he wasn’t the only person who had been targeted. More and more Utahns have reported similar scams where their accounts are drained by transactions that occurred thousands of miles away, officials say.
Uptick in theft
About 83,000 Utahns receive food stamp benefits, according to the Utah Department of Workforce Services, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and provides food stamp benefits.
The Department of Workforce Services first saw food stamp theft spike in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, department spokesperson Becky Wickstom said. Federal funds were appropriated to reimburse individuals across the country who had been scammed, but that money ran out in December.
Late last year, reports of theft in Utah climbed from 876 in October to 1,021 in December. But after reimbursements stopped in December, fewer people have reported theft, Wickstrom said. The department received about 400 reports in January, she added, and the agency doesn’t have “solid numbers” of reports of theft since then.
Claudia Cruz, who works as the Alex & Sally Lebwohl food pantry coordinator for Jewish Family Services, said in April that she had heard from at least eight people who have been scammed.
“That’s the reason they’re coming to the food pantry, because they’ve had their food stamps stolen,” Cruz explained on April 17. “… They’re coming in because they don’t have any groceries, and they’re trying to go to other pantries as well, to just survive for the week without their money.”
When Johnson reported the theft to the Department of Workforce Services — which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and provides food stamp benefits — he received a new card and a new PIN for his account.
“I thought they’d be shocked,” Johnson said. “It’s like, ‘Oh yeah, this happens all the time.’”
Fighting the scammers
Department officials told Johnson to change his PIN frequently — before new funds appear in his account and after each transaction — to avoid being a target for theft.
But they said they couldn’t do anything about the stolen funds.
Utah is one of many states that didn’t opt to help reimburse people’s stolen food stamp benefits after the federal funding ran out. Workforce Services is instead focusing on preventing theft before it happens.
“To bridge that gap, they need to feed their people,” Zody argued of Utah officials. “There needs to be a reimbursement program in place until they fix this problem.”
Workforce Services is working with its card vendor on implementing more robust security measures, Wickstrom said, like a potential lock on transactions outside of Utah. In April, officials instituted a lock on EBT cards, so individuals can unlock their card when they use it but can block transactions when they’re not shopping.
Since the lock feature became available, Cruz said, the Alex & Sally Lebwohl food pantry has not seen as many victims of food stamp theft.
“I’m glad they implemented it, but it’s not a good solution for people who struggle with technology,” Zody said in a text on June 10. “… It’s more offloading of responsibility from the state to the cardholder — not necessarily bad, but the point of social programs is to help people who are struggling. They don’t need yet more things to worry about.”
Officials aren’t sure how scammers are accessing EBT accounts, Wickstrom said. But the tactics are getting “more and more sophisticated,” since many individuals like Johnson have reported stolen funds on the day their food stamp funds are deposited.
EBT cards typically don’t have the owner’s name printed on them; however, funds are deposited in accordance with where the account holder’s last name falls alphabetically.
That date of deposit based on an individual’s last name is made public, Wickstrom said. Officials suspect hackers are repeatedly running numbers through some kind of algorithm, and sometimes the hackers get lucky, able to access an account on the day of the deposit.
As for investigating the scam, Wickstrom said victims of theft are encouraged to file a report with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General, since the transactions often occur across state lines.
The department is keeping the Utah governor’s office and Legislature updated on the problem, Wickstrom said, but she couldn’t say if they’d had any conversations about instituting a state reimbursement program.
Johnson said he was lucky, since when he was scammed, he had a fair amount of food already stocked up — and he can rely on Zody for help if he needs it.
“I’m worried about these other people,” Johnson said. “A lot of people need that food desperately — many have children who are going hungry and all that. So we want them to catch the thieves, and we want the government to start doing their job.”
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