MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) – Lawmakers in Alabama’s Contract Review Committee approved an $8.5 million contract aimed at cracking down on fraud in the EBT system.
The contract is with Conduent State and Local Solution Inc., based in New Jersey. The company will partner with the Alabama Department of Human Resources to identify and reduce EBT cardholder losses.
“We’re not only attacking the fraud, the situation where clients are victims of fraud, but we’re also going after fraud in the stores and individuals,” said Brandon Hardin, SNAP director at Alabama DHR.
Earlier this year, the state introduced chipped SNAP benefit cards to help prevent theft after the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported nearly $16 million in stolen Alabama SNAP benefits between 2023 and 2025.
“I’ve just learned of this recently, and I’m grateful for the effort that you all are putting forth there on the fraud; that’s encouraging,” said Sen. Dan Roberts, R-Mountain Brook.
DHR also provided an update on the state’s efforts to reduce the SNAP error rate, which is a combination of overpayments and underpayments of benefits to SNAP recipients.
According to Hardin, the unofficial error rate for fiscal year 2026 is roughly 8.5 percent.
Under the federal government’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the state has to get the error rate below 6 percent to avoid paying a greater share of the program’s costs starting next fiscal year.
However, DHR said they are still hoping for a delay in that penalty from the federal government.
“Anything we can do to kick the can down the road is a good thing, but we want to make sure that we get that shot so we can show you all that we can drive our error rate down and we can use current statistics to prove that,” said Hardin.
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