"His appointees are looking at Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program from an enforcement perspective, seeing fraud as a major and expensive problem, perpetrated by organized criminal organizations, individual recipients and retailers willing to break the laws for profit. "We know there are instances of fraud committed by our friends and neighbors, but also transnational crime rings," Jennifer Tiller, a senior advisor to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, said in an interview."
"Of the $100 billion spent on SNAP a year, about $94 billion goes to benefits and the rest to administrative costs. About 42 million people - or 1 in 8 Americans - receive SNAP benefits averaging about $190 per person per month. The number of recipients is in the same ballpark as the number of people in poverty - 36 million by the traditional measure and 43 million under a more nuanced one also used by the federal government."
"Some experts agree that SNAP fraud is a major problem. But there is little publicly available data showing the extent of it, and others who study the program are skeptical about the scale. 'It you're spending $100 billion on anything, you're going to have some leakage,' said Christopher Bosso, a professor of public policy and politics at Northeastern University who published a book on SNAP."
Administration officials characterize SNAP as suffering significant fraud involving organized crime rings, individual recipients, and complicit retailers and are prioritizing enforcement. Officials have requested detailed recipient records, including Social Security numbers, birth dates, and immigration status, to identify fraud. Estimates of SNAP leakage are disputed; some experts acknowledge meaningful fraud while others note a lack of public data to measure its extent. The program spends about $100 billion annually, roughly $94 billion for benefits, serving about 42 million people who average $190 per month. Federal rules require periodic income reporting and at-least-annual recertification of most households.
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