BPOSTON (SHNS) – Transitional Assistance Commissioner Jeff McCue told lawmakers Tuesday the administration will be asking for money for EBT cards in a supplemental budget, but it won’t be for the replacement of stolen grocery benefits.
Massachusetts and other states have for years been dealing with a rise in criminals deploying skimming devices on ATMs and point-of-sale card readers to steal EBT card numbers and PINs, or scamming benefit recipients out of that information through phishing campaigns to steal the benefits due to that person. The problem has particularly affected the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
For a while, the federal government was reimbursing families who could prove their EBT dollars were wrongfully claimed. As of September, the Department of Transitional Assistance had issued about $9 million in federally funded replacement benefits to about 20,100 Bay State households who were victims of SNAP theft…