A DISABLED woman has been left penniless after her final $400 was wiped from her account.
Joyce Haught said she could not afford to buy food because a deadline for getting the stolen cash back had passed.
The woman, from Anchorage, Alaska, said she faced big trouble after a thief took her Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.
Joyce said that she and her husband relied on disability benefits to buy groceries.
The disabled woman said she became stuck after finding out a federal reimbursement program had ended.
Joyce said she was not able to get back her stolen $400 as the SNAP recompensation scheme ended on December 20.
SNAP leaders reportedly told agency staff to inform recipients of this change in December.
Despite this, Joyce said was shocked and claimed only discovered this federal change recently while on the phone to the agency.
Joyce informed Alaska’s News Source that she was connected with someone who refused to disclose their name and delivered the message that starting December 20th, they would no longer be providing refunds or replacements for lost or stolen food stamps.
She was taken aback when a supervisor shared this new policy with her but failed to provide any information about its origin or source.
“I’m stuck basically between a rock and a hard place, I can’t afford to go to the store and buy groceries.”
Division of Public Assistance Director Deb Etheridge expressed sympathy for Haught’s negative encounter, acknowledging that her interaction with the office had been unhelpful.
But she also ensured she would bring the issue up with her staff.
Etheridge added that with no guarantee the state would receive federal reimbursements, the decision boils down to a plan of putting prevention over replacement.
She told Alaska’s News Source: “Without federal funding continuing to replace those stolen benefits would require the state to divert our limited resources from other essential public assistance programs, and so, putting our efforts to focus on prevention is really where we’re at.”
Etheridge also revealed that alongside making information readily available on the state’s Department of Health‘s website, her office is looking to transition to chip-enabled EBT cards to hopefully cut down on scam reports.
She said two common kinds of scam reports are people either receiving robocalls requesting card information or, like Haught, people’s card information getting stolen after swiping through a Point of Sale terminal – dubbed “skimming”.
Etheridge said the department consistently encourages anyone who has fallen victim to these scams to file police reports and change their pin’s regularly.
She added that due to the high numbers of reports filed to cops, her department could work closely with law enforcement to end SNAP benefits being ordered online and sent out of state.
Making sure the scams can only take place within the state made the difference of millions of dollars in SNAP funds being stolen, Etheridge claims.
She also recommended calling the number on the back of the EBT card to understand all account-related information and stay up-to-date.
But, following Haught’s recent experience, she feels the communication process of sharing critical information and giving transparency needs to be improved.
She said: “They are woefully reticent in giving you any useful information.
“In the past, I was able to call the phone number on the back of the food stamp card and it would tell you where you made a transaction, when it was, how much it was and that’s not available anymore.”
