Expand your understanding of food systems as a Civil Eats member. Enjoy unlimited access to our groundbreaking reporting, engage with experts, and connect with a community of changemakers.

Join today

Already a member?
Login

On Fox News in April, she said that 14,000 SNAP recipients were driving luxury vehicles, like Ferraris and Teslas, in just one state. During a June Senate hearing, she told lawmakers that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has made 900 arrests, pursued more than 120 convictions, and received $132 million in restitution tied to SNAP fraud.

Some of these claims are harder to verify than others. The USDA has worked with state and federal law enforcement to charge individuals in large-scale fraud schemes, allegedly perpetrated by former agency employees, retailers, and other individuals.

But as other news outlets have noted, the figure showing SNAP recipients driving luxury vehicles appears to come from a report by the Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative policy think tank that has advocated against welfare programs like SNAP. And the source of group’s information is unclear, making it impossible to verify. Its report only cites the author’s analysis of “de-identified data from an anonymous state provided by a leading program-integrity consultant.”

Nevertheless, Rollins and other administration officials have been building a narrative about SNAP fraud, along with fraud in other social safety net programs like Medicaid and Medicare.

As experts told Civil Eats, the rhetoric is not new. But the latest efforts could weaken trust in these programs, leading to more cuts to a system that is already struggling—and that already has extensive fraud prevention and quality control in place.

“We don’t want waste, fraud, or abuse in any federal program, SNAP or otherwise,” said Emily Weikert Bryant, executive director at Feeding Indiana’s Hungry. “But the SNAP program, more so than many, has extensive processes in place because it is a program that has for many years had well above average scrutiny for not necessarily the right reasons.”

A USDA warning notice regarding food assistance and EBT fraud in Lafayette, California. (Photo credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

Critics of SNAP and other safety-net programs used rare instances of individuals exploiting the system as justification to cut back on the program, Waxman said. In reality, this narrative diminishes the struggles many people have when it comes to buying basic necessities and the support federal programs like SNAP can offer.

“It demonizes people as a class, instead of understanding that there will always be individuals who may abuse the system and need to be identified and prosecuted if appropriate,” Waxman said. “We end up engaging in collective punishment around the narrative that [SNAP] is flawed and stigmatizing benefits that people really need.”

“We end up engaging in collective punishment around the narrative that [SNAP] is flawed and stigmatizing benefits that people really need.”

The latest emphasis on fraud in SNAP emerged as Republicans were passing the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) last year. To help justify tax cuts in the bill, lawmakers sought to root out alleged waste, fraud, and abuse in federal programs. This rhetoric continued after the OBBB, and through the 2025 government shutdown, when SNAP benefits were delayed. At the time, Rollins called SNAP “bloated,” “dysfunctional,” and “corrupt.”

Under Rollins, the USDA has adopted an aggressive stance. Among other initiatives, her agency required states to share data about SNAP households, like birth dates, Social Security numbers, and addresses for a new database. Twenty-nine states, largely Republican-led, did share data, and findings were released in May.

With just over half of states reporting, the data is not complete. Even with the data that did come through, the agency has provided “scant” details about their methodology for the findings from states, said Katie Bergh, a senior food-assistance policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Bergh noted that through the quality-control process, SNAP cases are often checked against other databases, including the Social Security Administration. The methodology released by the USDA does not appear to account for the current verification and quality control processes, which could lead to false positives that states need to separately validate, she said.

“I think it’s very hard to draw any conclusions from what they’ve reported thus far,” Bergh said.

The USDA claims it found $3 billion in “fraud” from these 29 states. But it’s unclear whether the discrepancies are cases of intentional fraud or unintentional administrative mistakes.

The total dollar amount appears to come from taking each case of potential “fraud” and multiplying it by the average annual SNAP benefit, Bergh said. In reality, the discrepancy could have been for a shorter period or for a smaller amount.

Data and figures from the 29 states, as well as other metrics, have been raised as evidence of widespread fraud. The administration has gone on to explain recent drops in SNAP participation as evidence states are weeding out fraud.

In reality, Bergh said, states are reacting to federal policy shifts, while individuals are losing access to the program, even though they remain eligible and in need of aid.

“People are losing food assistance at the fastest rate in decades,” Bergh said. “That’s the context in which some of these attacks should be viewed.”

SNAP trafficking has occurred throughout the program’s history. The rates of misuse increased particularly as the program grew from 5 million people in 1970 to 20 million in 1979 and 42 million in 2025.

In fiscal year 2023, state agency investigators referred more than 30,000 recipient fraud investigations to prosecutors or administrative disqualification hearings. These investigations include eligibility fraud or benefit trafficking. Over 1,200 of these cases ended in acquittals, and in nearly 4,000 disqualification hearings, the individual was found to be not intentionally violating the program.

State agencies have also been able to recoup some funds from fraudulent cases. In fiscal year 2023, state agencies established about $543 million in claims against households that received more benefits than they were eligible for or have trafficked benefits. Agencies collected nearly $389 million, according to the latest SNAP state agency activity report.

The amount of household-related fraud is miniscule. In fiscal year 2023, 42.1 million people participated in SNAP each month. The federal government issued about $106 billion in benefits during this period.

Throughout the process of drafting and passing the OBBB, Republicans explained the cuts to SNAP by insisting the policies were rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse inside the program.

They would go on to cite a state’s payment error rate, which is calculated and published annually.

One of its biggest policy shifts, the OBBB requires states to fund a portion of benefits distributed through SNAP. The federal government has historically funded all SNAP benefits.

The total amount a state will be expected to chip in is based on its error rates.

But payment error rates are not fraud, and are largely unintentional mistakes, according to the USDA website on SNAP quality control. While Republicans and the administration argue the SNAP program is running wild and with little oversight, experts say there is an extensive quality control system in place.

About 150 people gathered outside the Connecticut State Capitol in April, rallying for state assistance for those who have been pushed off federal SNAP benefits. (Photo credit: Ken Dixon/Connecticut Post via Getty Images)

The program also has a system of state and federal quality control checks. Review starts at the state level, where staff check the accuracy of a random sample of cases. This could include further interviews with the household and more extensive documentation review.

State quality-control reviewers examine about 50,000 cases nationwide on an annual basis, according to the USDA. Federal quality-control reviewers then analyze about half that number of cases to ensure the accuracy of the state-level review.