(The Center Square) – Around $607 million was stolen from EBT accounts in 2025, according to a new report.
Propel, an EBT benefits tracking program, issued a report that found large amounts of benefit theft from cards used as a part of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Among people whose benefits were stolen, 56% said they skipped or reduced meals and 43% reported going into further debt.
Jimmy Chen, founder of Propel, told The Center Square most theft occurs when information is stolen from card readers that are installed secretly to steal EBT benefits. He said the theft Propel tracked down is different from the fraud issues the federal government has tracked.
“This is a case that is a little bit distinct from other kinds of national conversations around safety net programs,” Chen said. “It’s actually finding criminals and getting them to stop this.”
EBT cards are one of the last remaining Magstripe cards in the United States. This makes the cards a target for scam card readers where payments are processed.
Over the last year, Propel found 18% of households reported their benefits were stolen, down from 27% in 2025. However, sums of stolen dollars were far larger than previous years. About 64% of households lost more than $250, and 32% lost over $500.
Chen said he has tracked reports of theft at traditional grocery stores, where fraudulent card readers steal EBT benefits from people.
The Trump administration has sought to aggressively pursue fraud across social safety net programs in SNAP. The administration has limited what kinds of food are available to buy as part of SNAP in some states.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, has slammed the SNAP program as being “rife with waste, fraud and abuse.” She has called on states to implement measures to reduce reliance on SNAP benefits and boasted at lower enrollment rates.
Based on data from 28 states, the administration said it has found 186,000 dead people receiving SNAP benefits and 356,000 cases of duplicate enrollments. Rollins boasted of her involvement in the White House Fraud Task Force, led by Vice President JD Vance to tackle issues across SNAP.
“I am eager to work with him to usher in a new era of accountability for taxpayers and for those who truly need this program to survive,” Rollins wrote in an editorial for The Hill.
In 2025, California became the first state to implement chip payments on EBT cards. Propel found the chip feature led to a drop in EBT theft from users across the state. Before implementation, 19% of EBT card users reported theft and 8% reported it after chip payment was added.
“Chip cards are definitely the long-term play to reduce EBT fraud and theft,” Chen said. “California has demonstrated what implementing chip cards can do to reduce EBT theft.
However, Chen said that implementing chip cards can be expensive and take a long time to roll out in certain states. He encouraged state legislatures to implement other security measures to prevent EBT theft, like card locking or blocking out-of-state transactions.
The report found 45% of respondents began to lock their cards when not in use and 39% blocked out-of-state transactions to prevent theft and fraud. Chen said these solutions are not ideal because they still require manual steps.
“We don’t have users of credit cards to have to do that all the time to keep their own money safe so it seems a bit unfair to ask EBT users to do that in perpetuity,” Chen said.
Chen encouraged states to adopt the model of banks and credit card companies to reduce theft of SNAP benefits. He said Propel has been in talks with state governments to build a pilot that tracks suspicious SNAP transactions and classifies them as fraudulent.
“Families do worry about this issue, it’s a big deal,” Chen said. “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us to make it something that people don’t have to worry about.”
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