SNAP class action claims Feds stole New Yorkers’ food benefits

SNAP class action lawsuit overview:

• Who: Six plaintiffs have filed a class action lawsuit against the Secretary of the USDA and the Administrator of the USDA Food and Nutrition Service.
• Why: The defendants have allegedly refused to reimburse them for SNAP benefits that were stolen.
• Where: The SNAP class action lawsuit was filed in New York federal court.

Six plaintiffs have filed a class action lawsuit alleging that their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits were stolen, leaving them without a way to feed their families.

Plaintiffs Haiyan Chen, Kenya Watson, S.O., Gertrude Cribbs, Hana Broome and Mei Ieng Lee filed the SNAP class action lawsuit against the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Administrator of the USDA Food and Nutrition Service (FNS).

SNAP class action says feds refuse to reimburse benefits stolen through ‘skimming’

“Plaintiffs are the victims of an electronic form of theft known as ‘skimming,’ and represent only a few of the more than 10,000 documented instances of such theft in New York State since January 2022,” the SNAP class action lawsuit asserts.

Skimming refers to a practice in which bad actors install a Bluetooth-enabled card-reading device at a point-of-sale device in a retail store, the plaintiffs explain. The skimming device captures customers’ payment card number, account information and personal identification number (PIN).

With this stolen information, criminals can create a counterfeit card and steal from the victim’s account, according to the SNAP class action lawsuit. In recent years, the financial industry has increasingly used chip and “tap-to-pay” cards, which have reduced skimming incidents.

However, electronic benefits transfer (EBT) cards, which are issued by state agencies to provide SNAP benefits, have a magnetic strip and can only be swiped. As a result, SNAP benefits recipients are uniquely vulnerable to skimming.

The plaintiffs claim perpetrators stole hundreds of dollars from each of their SNAP accounts. In some cases, thousands of dollars in SNAP benefits were stolen.

Defendants will not reimburse skimming victims, class action alleges

The defendants allegedly refuse to reimburse the skimming victims for their losses, even though they reportedly allow reimbursement of funds to consumers who had funds drawn from their accounts when their actual EBT cards were stolen. 

“As a result, plaintiffs are left with no ability to feed their families until issuance of the following month’s benefits, and must desperately turn to food banks, relatives, and neighbors to make up the shortfall,” the SNAP benefits class action lawsuit says.

In 2020, a federal judge blocked an attempt by the Trump administration to impose changes that would prevent hundreds of thousands of people from receiving SNAP benefits.

Do you think the plaintiffs and class members should be entitled to reimbursement of SNAP benefits that were stolen by skimming? Join the discussion in the comments.

The plaintiffs are represented by Mary Eaton, Umer Ali and Maria Slobodchikova of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer US LLP and Judith Goldiner, Edward Josephson, Alex MacDougall and Susan Welber of The Legal Aid Society.

The SNAP benefits class action lawsuit is Haiyan Chen, et al. v. Tom Vilsack, in his official capacity as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), et al., Case No. 1:23-cv-01440, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

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