And in California, $7 million was stolen between July of 2021 and November of 2022. In New York, between January of 2022 and March of 2023, $7 million was stolen, with more than 10,000 complaints of skimming. In Massachusetts, between June of 2022 and March of 2023, $2.9 million was stolen, impacting more than 6,700 households. We contacted all 50 state agencies that administer SNAP programs and only a few could tell us how much money has been stolen – but it's clear it's in the millions. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the federal SNAP program, told CBS News via email that prior to this year, there was no federal requirement for states to track reports of benefit theft via card skimming, card cloning or other similar fraudulent means. "So, the only way this could have happened is someone stealing it directly, either while I used it at some sort of random convenience store, and my information might have gotten sold and skimmed." The cost of fraud "The card has always been in my possession and I've never given out my information," she said. "I can't afford a Sam's Club membership," she said. Lee found that someone had used her card number to make purchases nearly a thousand miles away at a Sam's Club store in Illinois. All my money was used a few days prior, right after my money just came in," said Lee. "I learned that from customer service on the phone when I was at the grocery store trying to handle all this. "You get a set amount of money every month from the government to help pay for your groceries," said Sung Hee Lee, a Boston college student who says she works 30 hours a week, attends school full-time and struggles to make ends meet.Įach month, she goes to the grocery store to stock up on food, but on a recent trip, just a day after her electronic benefit (EBT) card was reloaded, she discovered her account balance had almost entirely vanished. In recent months, thousands of Americans who rely on Federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance, or SNAP, have had their funds stolen from their accounts. Since mid-2022, skimming thieves have been training their sights on an especially vulnerable group - the food insecure. New skimmers can steal data from chip cards 07:19 New victims They've even moved to what he calls deep insertion skimmers, devices so thin they can slip right into the reader undetected - making it a challenge for even a professional technician to remove and tougher for law enforcement to keep up. "It's just evolved in how the criminals are capturing the information," he said. So, they would use one of these overlay skimmers and then they would insert a camera so they would get the pin." "There's a small pinhole on this piece of plastic that would normally sit just like this on the ATM machine and would capture the keypad. ![]() In recent years they began finding tiny hidden cameras right on the card readers. Leopard says that in the 25 years skimming has been around, the devices have advanced from the handheld card readers used in the late 1990s by restaurant wait staff to ATM overlays and point of service panels that slip right on top of the card readers. ![]() But even with those resources and computing power, Leopard says scammers are constantly using new ways to thwart the latest security measures. "This lab in particular is very beneficial to the municipalities and state and local agencies around here as this lab takes in tons of violent crime, homicides and any other type of electronic device that needs to be examined, that is seized or part of a federal, state or local crime," said Leopard.Įach year, the 50 full-time and 75 part-time computer forensic technicians conduct about 5,000 examinations - processing more than a petabyte of data volume. ![]() In addition to that, they also investigate access device fraud, like credit card fraud and skimming. Inside the massive lab, technicians work on investigations that impact the economic infrastructure of the United States - everything from counterfeit currency to email phishing scams to any type of mortgage or loan fraud.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |