INDIANAPOLIS — Thieves are targeting Indiana families who rely on the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), draining their accounts before they can buy food.
Two Indianapolis women said their monthly benefits loaded as usual at midnight on September 13. By the next day, the money was gone.
“I went to the little Indy Fresh Market that’s around the corner. I had a whole cart full of stuff,” said Ericka Lollis. “I got up to the register, it declined twice. So I was like, I don’t know what’s going on. I called my card. When I called my card, it was zero, the balance was zero. I listened to the last 10 transactions, and they just wiped me out.”
Lollis lost $916.22 from her EBT account. Records show the funds were spent between 3:05 and 3:11 a.m. at markets in New Jersey and Philadelphia.
“Every single penny within 6 minutes was gone,” she said.
The same thing happened to Evelyn Jorgenson this past weekend. Her $1,158 in SNAP benefits was also spent in Philadelphia.
“I didn’t think it was real,” Jorgenson said. “They really did take my stuff.”
Both women said they don’t know how their funds were stolen. The Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA) warned that thieves use card skimming, card cloning, and other methods to drain benefits.
The stolen benefits were meant to last both families the entire month, leaving them without grocery funds until October 13. Indiana stopped refunding stolen SNAP benefits in December 2024 after federal reimbursement funding ended.
“There’s nothing that they can do at all,” Lollis said. “It’s gonna be a struggle to get us to the next month.”
Lollis, who has five children and was recently laid off, said she has never had her SNAP benefits stolen since joining the program in 2017. Jorgenson, a mother of six, said her daughter in Arizona had her benefits stolen last month — also spent in Philadelphia. Lollis said when she posted on Facebook about her stolen benefits, several other people reported the same issue.
“Whoever’s scamming? I’m like, please stop. I need my food. My kids need to eat. I got to figure out how I’m going to feed them for the rest of the month,” Jorgenson said. “It’s hard. I was crying. I’m done crying. I gotta get over it and do what I gotta do as a mom.”
FSSA advises benefit members to lock their EBT cards, use stronger PINs, and change their PIN after each use. The Division of Family Resources is collecting reports of card skimming to gauge the problem’s scope and says it is working with the USDA/Food and Nutrition Service and its EBT processor on enhanced security measures.
“I just feel like something needs to be done about this issue, this theft, something with the cards, I don’t know,” Lollis said.
In the meantime, she is compiling information about where her stolen benefits were spent and filing police reports in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
