BEAUMONT — KFDM has received a flood of calls and emails from Southeast Texas families who say criminals drained their Lone Star Card SNAP benefits — leaving them without money to buy food.
Those families are victims of benefit theft. So are taxpayers, who fund the programs.
Texas Health and Human Services Inspector General Raymond Charles Winter told state lawmakers this summer that national estimates indicate up to 10% of health and human services spending is lost to waste, fraud and abuse.
When Medicaid and SNAP fraud are included, Winter estimated criminals are taking Texas taxpayers on a $5 billion ride each year.
“So that means $5.3 billion in Texas does not go where it’s intended to go,” Winter told lawmakers. “That’s not only a theft from taxpayers. It means that Texas citizens who so desperately need these services are not getting them,” he said in a May 5 hearing.
The estimate includes Medicaid fraud, which Waste Watch will examine next week.
For SNAP, also known as food stamps, the Texas Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General identifies three primary types of fraud:
Client fraud: A person lies or withholds information to receive benefits they do not qualify for.Trafficking: Someone exchanges SNAP benefits for cash.Benefits theft: Criminals use skimming, hacking or account takeovers to steal benefits from a recipient’s card.
That last category has become a painful reality for families whose Lone Star Card accounts have been compromised.
The inspector general’s office says potential future safeguards include adding chips to Lone Star Cards and enabling multi-factor authentication.
Anyone who believes their EBT or Lone Star Card has been compromised should call the Lone Star Card Help Desk at 1-800-777-7328 to cancel the card.
As KFDM has reported, SNAP benefits stolen through EBT card skimming on or after Dec. 21, 2024, cannot be replaced because of cuts in federal funding.
