Queens SNAP Theft Climbs as Feds End Compensation, State Eyes Chip Card Fix

As SNAP beneficiaries see millions vanished from their accounts in increasingly brazen skimming scams, New York confronts the consequences of outdated technology and a vanished federal safety net.

The number is both unassuming and alarming: 80,000 New York households, annually on average in recent years, have reported their SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits stolen by electronic thieves. This is not the handiwork of shadowy hackers half a planet away, but of petty criminals in the city’s bodegas and supermarkets, attaching skimmers to outdated EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer) terminals. For tens of thousands of vulnerable New Yorkers, the result is literal hunger, not mere inconvenience.

Until the end of 2024, victims of this escalating theft could cling to one consolation. Albany and the city’s Human Resources Administration (HRA), armed with federal dollars, would restore the pilfered benefits—over $51m last year alone. Yet as political winds shifted in Washington, that lifeline was severed: by January 2025, the federal reimbursement program ended. Now, as some $14.5m in SNAP funds have vanished in New York City in just the first six months of this year, victims—often seniors, immigrants and low-wage families—have no redress.

The mechanics of the crime are almost laughably prosaic. New York’s EBT cards continue to rely on magnetic stripes, a technology last considered cutting-edge in the Clinton era, and a plaything for modern card skimmers. Criminals need only a quick sleight-of-hand at a terminal to clone the data, and the next day, a duplicate card can drain an account. California, once plagued by similar woes, reduced SNAP theft by a hefty 83% within a year of switching to chip-enabled EBT cards. In New York, the wheels of modernization grind slowly: state officials estimate a 12–18 month wait before chip cards are in all SNAP recipients’ hands.

For now, the human costs mount. Consider the senior in Jackson Heights who found her EBT account empty and her pantry barer still; or the parent receiving the same unwelcome notification. As Jessica González-Rojas, a Queens assemblywoman, points out, seniors are especially at risk. In Queens, nearly 60% of older adults report no retirement income, most rely on SNAP, and three-fifths speak a language other than English as their primary tongue—complicating fraud awareness and recourse.

The consequences ripple outward. After a theft, beneficiaries are forced to depend on food pantries—already stretched thin in a city where demand for relief remains stubbornly high. Some do without. Community-based organizations and local governments shoulder the rising humanitarian burden, at palpable cost: pantries report increased demand that outpaces their stores. According to City Harvest, a nonprofit, over 2m New Yorkers—one in four—are considered food insecure.

Economic and political aftershocks are no smaller. SNAP does not merely ease poverty; it sustains local economies, funneling federal funds into neighbourhood groceries and big chains alike. With skimming unchecked and no hope of reimbursement, both small stores and the city’s food economy lose out. Politically, the fraught federal-state dance over social welfare resurfaces. Washington’s cutback—the Trump administration’s decision, implemented by the USDA—may have trimmed expenditures in the short term, but at the expense of New York’s most vulnerable.

The city’s immigrant-rich population faces an outsized share of the burden. Many new arrivals unfamiliar with stickers or warning signs fall victim to scams, and language access remains patchy. Outreach efforts, including HRA workshops and pamphlets, can only do so much when the financial stakes are this high and the technology this lacking.

Nationally, EBT skimming is hardly unique to New York. Cities from Chicago to Houston have documented surges in theft, spurred by slow federal movement on mandating chip-card upgrades. Only a handful of states, including California and Massachusetts, have made substantial progress. The lag is reminiscent of America’s broader resistance—compared with Europe or East Asia—to retiring outdated financial infrastructure; familiarity and bureaucratic inertia have proved powerful adversaries.

Global comparisons are instructive. Britain and much of the European Union have all but eliminated card skimming, thanks to chip-and-PIN requirements and rigorous point-of-sale regulations. That American public-assistance programs, designed for society’s most fragile, lag so far behind in card security will puzzle even jaded observers abroad.

Turning off the tap, but not the thieves

Amid all this, Albany has signalled its intention to fill the gap left by the federal retreat. Legislation is in the works to establish New York’s own EBT skimming victim compensation fund—a state-level patch on a gaping national wound. Advocates and local politicians are calling for emergency measures, but whether such a scheme can muster both the funding and administrative muscle to match the previous federal outlay remains in question.

There is, at least, a faint glimmer from the pace of innovation. The state’s Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, in promising an eventual transition to chip cards, is betting on the same success enjoyed in California. A 12–18 month wait may seem paltry to bureaucrats but is an eternity to a family missing dinner tonight.

A sceptic would note that New York’s predicament exemplifies the dangers of clinging to ageing technology while overlying on Washington’s largesse. Reliance on federal stopgaps has bred a brittle ecosystem: quick to collapse, slow to repair. Attempts at outreach and fraud-awareness, while critical, are no substitute for robust systemic change.

Efficiency, not sentimentality, ought to be the order of the day. Upgrading cards is a low-cost, high-impact fix, especially when measured against the human and financial toll of skimming. A reimbursement fund is a necessary, if imperfect, bandage. But structural change would spare New Yorkers both indignities and expense.

In the end, the persistence of SNAP theft bodes ill for a city striving to be both modern and humane. Technology alone cannot shield every cardholder, but neither should New Yorkers be forced to rely on luck and charity until better days (or cards) arrive. For city officials and Albany lawmakers, the task is stark: shore up the defences of the social safety net, or watch its threads unravel with each swipe of an obsolete card. ■