SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Thieves are stealing millions of dollars from CalFresh and CalWORKs recipient cards. It is forcing families who really need the help to wait for those funds to be replaced and also forcing taxpayers to pay more into the program.
The California Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) is supposed to help eliminate uncertainty for low-income families, but thieves targeting EBT is instead causing headaches.
“It was a feeling of defeat. Honestly, as a man, as a father of children, it was a defeat,” said Chad Guthrie, who was frauded out of $3,200.
Guthrie lives in Fresno with his wife and five children. Thieves stole $1,600 in May.
“First month that happened to us, we had a doctor's appointment in Sunnyvale for our youngest son who has Williams syndrome,” said Guthrie. “Money was deposited I believe 6:15 a.m., and at 6:17 a.m. There was one withdrawal that time for the total amount of the $1,600.”
Guthrie and his family live paycheck to paycheck and rely on that money to keep the lights on and food on the table. If one time wasn’t enough, thieves stole another $1,600 in August, forcing the family to fall behind on their debt forgiveness program.
“(It) means our current $800 electric bill, which is what we are paying about a month right now, will automatically go up to about a $2,000,” said Guthrie.
While the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) did reimburse the family for the stolen amount, they had to wait nearly 30 days each time, taking on late fees and stress for something out of their hands.
“That is my biggest fear, if we can't stay on that program and can't make it through this, the chance of losing our electricity is extremely high,” said Guthrie. “We also lose our Section 8 housing, which means we also lose our house.
Between the two programs, the state reports thieves have stolen more than $86 million in 21 months.
“$86,675,839, that is an awful lot of money that has been mismanaged and we need to fix it and we need to stop it,” said Asm. Tom Lackey, (R) Palmdale.
For Assemblyman Lackey, this latest case of fraud is feeling a lot like déjà vu. Lackey recently dealt with pandemic-related EDD fraud, which saw an estimated $20 billion in unemployment money stolen.
“I was taught a phrase long ago that if it's predictable, it should be preventable,” said Lackey. “I don't know how many times we have to repeat this before we actually take action because people are losing confidence in government. These are the circumstances that validate that lack of confidence, and we need to restore the confidence in government and the only way to do that is to fix these problems and make sure they don't resurface.”
Lackey says they will look to mitigate this problem, so it doesn’t get out of control.
In the meantime, the Guthries say they are changing their code the day before the money arrives, so they don’t become victims again.
“There is no more remembering the code, we are writing it down,” said Guthrie.
A potential solution for this issue is installing chips inside EBT cards to prevent scammers from easily skimming the cards. ABC10 reached out to the CDSS and were told the chips are in the works, but the department did not give a specific timeline.
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