Keenya Banks lives in Philadelphia with her husband and the two grandchildren they care for. She has never been to Fishkill in New York’s Hudson Valley.
Yet, that’s where someone spent more than $650 in food assistance benefits for her family at a Sam’s Club in April in an alleged case of EBT skimming, just one of the more than 5,100 cases reported in Pennsylvania between the start of the year and May. This year’s skimming incidents account for approximately $2.5 million in stolen benefits, according to the Pennsylvania Office of State Inspector General, which investigates the reports and seizes the skimming devices.
It’s likely Banks used her EBT card in a point-of-sale machine rigged with a device designed to copy her card information and pin number. Someone then applied her EBT information to a different physical card and drained her monthly benefits the next day.
“I was too numb to cry because I just couldn’t believe it,” said Banks, 56, who was alerted to the fraud as she tried to purchase food days after she had gotten her month’s benefits. “They said, ‘Ma’am, this is declined.’ I said, ‘No, no, I have at least 600-something dollars.’”
Even more devastating to Banks: For a brief stretch of time, benefits were being reimbursed through a federal program, but that ended December 2024 because Congress did not extend funding. The most that the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services can do is direct victims to food banks and other food assistance programs. The end of the federal reimbursement program also means the skimming incident data Pennsylvania has on hand are likely an undercount: Victim advocates say people may simply skip reporting if they believe nothing can be done.
Pennsylvania is looking at a possible solution, but without one immediately available, Banks spent a month scrambling to put food on the table with the help of food pantries and what she had on hand.
“We had been storing up, like a lot of canned goods and water, and we had a deep freezer, and thank God we were able to really kind of make ends meet.”
Victim advocates argue EBT skimming has risen to a nationwide crisis because the federal government has failed to invest in more secure card technology. Between October 2022 and the end of the reimbursement program in 2024, states reported $320 million in stolen Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, according to the Government Accountability Office.
EBT cards: From cutting-edge technology to scammers’ favorite
The idea that someone’s food benefits could be loaded digitally onto something that worked like a debit card was once revolutionary.
Before federal supplemental food assistance could be loaded onto a card, it used to come by way of coupon books or mailed checks, depending on the program. These methods not only came with high administrative costs but in the case of the coupons, also known as “food stamps,” there was an element of stigma and a risk of forgery.
The federal government launched its first “electronic benefit transfer” pilot in Reading in 1984, yet it was not until 2002 that all states were required to make the switch.
By then, scammers had already learned how to exploit the magnetic stripe technology used in debit, credit, and EBT cards. While banks have made cards more secure by adopting chip technology, the federal government has stuck with the magnetic stripes for EBT cards.
In the absence of chip adoption, states have resorted to other added security measures. Last May, Pennsylvania launched ConnectEBT, an app that allows people to lock their cards until they are at the checkout line, ready to use them.
Mackenzie Libbey, staff attorney in the health and independence unit at Community Legal Services, noted the current system places the onus on families, which are required to lock and unlock their cards, monitor their spending, and change their PIN regularly to stay ahead of fraudsters.
“It’s just not something that anyone would expect of a middle-class consumer using a credit or debit card,” Libbey said. “It’s a lot of extra effort to protect benefits that they have shown they’re entitled and eligible to receive.”
CLS has advocated for the federal government to reimburse victims of skimming again and for Pennsylvania to adopt chip cards.
Pennsylvania eyes chip EBT cards
The federal government did not approve the use of chip and tap-enabled EBT cards until 2024, largely due to concerns over the costs of upgrading the aging technological infrastructure in use.
Some states were eager to become early adopters and tackle the skimming issue.
In February 2025, California became the first state to begin replacing the magnetic stripe cards, with a handful of states following suit because of their own issues with skimming. Oklahoma launched a two-month pilot this March, and in April, Massachusetts announced its plan for a pilot later this year. New Jersey also has plans for a chip card rollout.
But the U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved only two vendors for the new cards, and users in early adopter states have complained about issues with the chips and difficulties getting the cards to process.
Those issues gave Pennsylvania Secretary of Human Services Val Arkoosh pause. She has previously said the technology was not quite ready.
In a May hearing with the House Democratic Policy Committee, however, Arkoosh said Pennsylvania’s vendor had promising data. After Alabama adopted chip cards, the state saw an 83% reduction in theft in 60 days among the people using the chip, she said.
“I do think I can now sit here and say to you, I believe that the technical issues have largely been solved,” she said at the hearing. “I didn’t want us to embark on this before we were confident that it would work, but I think we’re there now.”
And there appears to be interest in Harrisburg to go after EBT skimming.
A bipartisan bill that would require Pennsylvania to transition to chip-enabled EBT cards by 2028 moved out of committee Wednesday to the full House.
A recent cost estimate puts the overhaul at about $14 million, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services. It would take six to eight months to roll out chip cards after approval, barring any significant challenges, according to a December report by the department.
Should legislators in Harrisburg choose to fund the transition, they would have an incentive to move fast. While the federal government used to split SNAP administrative costs evenly with states, come Oct. 1, states will be on the hook for 75% of these expenses because of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
For now, the Pennsylvania Office of State Inspector General’s skimming response teams continue to search for these devices and prosecute fraudsters. Between April 2025 and March of this year, the agency said, it had prevented $8.3 million in potential losses.
The USDA, meanwhile, said it is not stopping at card locking and chip adoption. It is combating skimming and other SNAP fraud with mobile payment pilots and encouraging states to block out-of-state and online SNAP transactions by default.
These efforts, while welcome, cannot undo what Banks and her family went through the month after the theft they experienced. She hopes her story can alert other families to scammers targeting EBT users.
Until chip cards come, even Banks’ 10-year-old grandson is on the lookout, monitoring their card benefits and inspecting point-of-sale machines at the grocery stores.
“He’s so tech savvy and he’s very, very wary,” she said. “So he’s like, ‘Grandma, did you check and see if there’s a skimmer on there?’”