To hear the Trump administration tell it, the SNAP program is under siege by well-heeled recipients of food stamps. Vice President JD Vance, upon being named “Fraud Czar” this spring, said: “There are people who have Lamborghinis who currently receive SNAP benefits.” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, whose agency oversees the program, regularly goes on TV and social media to allege that masses of SNAP recipients are scamming the system, driving Bentleys, Ferraris, Maseratis and, yes, Lamborghinis.
The federal government’s own statistics tell a different story. Confirmed cases of intentional program violations — fraud — committed by SNAP recipients account for $64 million a year, or about 0.08% of all benefits issued annually, according to the most recent 50-state reports compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Meanwhile a far bigger fraud wave has exploded over the past five years: organized theft from SNAP recipients. In 2025, $470 million was stolen electronically from beneficiaries — and thus from the U.S. taxpayer — according to data supplied to ProPublica by Propel, a company that provides a mobile app for SNAP recipients to check their account balances and transaction histories. More than 990,000 households that received food assistance last year had benefits stolen. (The reason it’s necessary to use data from a private company: The federal government has stopped tracking rates of this crime.)
ProPublica interviewed nearly 100 victims of SNAP theft, federal prosecutors, Secret Service agents, USDA officials, caseworkers and other experts to understand what’s behind this phenomenon and why more isn’t being done to stop it. The victims are almost all working people with families, or retirees, who have struggled to afford groceries in the current economy. Most didn’t learn about the crime until they were in a checkout line, only to have their benefit card declined.
I know this upsets us all, but I am just livid reading this. All for the lack of security chips? We won’t even make sure people can eat. How is this not a no brainer?
Doesn’t affect him or his ilk so fuck you(edit: you as in all of us poors.) Once the money is taken from the rich via tax, they couldn’t give a fuck about it. Instead they’d rather go after the lie that lots of “fraud” occurs, which allows for defunding and canceling the program, which means the right could pay even less taxes…
It’s disgusting
Why would they need to eat? They’re clearly buying a ton of Red Bull — just look at the receipts.
“There are people who have Lamborghinis who currently receive SNAP benefits.”
That seems like it’d be easy to prove, so how about you arrest them?
Because the woke mob is backing them up for supporting furry students putting litter boxes in bathrooms for transgender mexicans or some shit. /s
Nothing is too stupid, and nothing matters.
I’d like to say, thanks for adding the /s. Some people might think it’s dumb to do so, but I know people who genuinely believe that shit.
The vast majority of money scammed from social programs is done by companies, often connected to those politicians, and rarely facing real consequence. Look at Rick Scott of Florida, they industrialized overcharging medicare, I think he as ceo personally profited 100 million from it. Walked away as a governor, then senator. I don’t think he spent a day in prison.
But the administration wants the poor to get hurt first of all out of general principle, and more importantly can use the fraud as an excuse to cut the program more later.
They need that money to bail out llm models and data centers!