With the holidays nearing, it’s a good time to remind our consumers to be careful with their food assistance cards. We are still seeing quite a bit of benefits lost to sophisticated fraud schemes.
You might have seen our Guard Your Card billboards around the region. Awareness to this problem is growing, but we’re hoping to make more people aware and prevent them from being unable to buy food at the holidays.
The good news is we now can replace SNAP benefits lost to skimming and cloning. Skimming means your pin was stolen by a card reader at a retail establishment. Cloning means your data was captured and criminals used it to create new, fake EBT cards.
We were unable to replace benefits until federal rules changed this summer. Our veteran fraud expert, Ed Feldkamp, said he just felt terrible when people would call and say their benefits were stolen and we couldn’t replace them. Moms were calling saying they didn’t have any food for their kids.
Since July, we have replaced almost $43,000 worth of benefits stolen in these ways. Feldkamp credits his team for working together to make it happen.
If you think your benefits were stolen, please call 513-946-1000 and ask for a 7011 application for replacement needed because of skimming or cloning. You can also report the fraud here.
