Dec 16, 2025
Desha Morris used the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as her personal cash machine, defrauding it out of more than $335,000.
Now the 39-year-old Indianapolis resident is a convicted criminal, sentenced to five years in prison for SNAP fraud.
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“Her scheme jeopardized access to food assistance for those in genuine need and exposed innocent individuals to potential long-term damage to their credit and financial security,” Tom Wheeler, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, said (1).
Between April 2020 and July 2022, Morris filed dozens of bogus SNAP applications using stolen IDs — even posing as different applicants during phone interviews with Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration.
She used forged documents to “prove” residency and income, going so far as to rent different homes to have a variety of mailing addresses for new SNAP Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards.
Once the EBT cards arrived, she either sold the benefits for cash or used them herself. By the time investigators caught up with her, Morris had drained more than $335,000 dollars from a program designed to help low income families buy groceries.
In addition to serving a five-year sentence, a federal judge has ordered her to repay $333,589.08 in restitution.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins used Desha Morris’s case and others like it to say that “business as usual is over,” and SNAP recipients will need to demonstrate that their households still meet eligibility requirements to continue receiving benefits (2).
It may leave you wondering about the extent of SNAP fraud and what the government is doing about it. After all, any form of SNAP fraud costs taxpayers money.
How big a problem is SNAP fraud?
As Morris’s case illustrates, it is possible for individuals to fraudulently apply for and illegally sell SNAP benefits.
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But according to government data, this is the least common type of SNAP fraud.
Individual recipient SNAP Fraud: $54 million in 2021
In 2021, state agencies tried to collect $54 million in overpayments due to misleading SNAP applications and benefit trafficking (3).
Retailer Trafficking: Estimated $1.25 billion
Retailer SNAP trafficking is far more common than individual recipient trafficking, according to a 2025 report by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University (4).
Overall, SNAP trafficking by retailers and recipients costs the U.S. an estimated $1.3 billion in SNAP overpayments every year, according to the USDA (5)
But if you subtract recipient fraud ($54 million in 2021) from that total, retailer trafficking accounts for a far larger portion — $1.246 billion — of SNAP overpayments each year.
SNAP Scams: Estimated $12 billion
This is by far the most extensive form of fraud, in which criminals steal recipients’ benefits. It costs upwards of $12 billion a year, according to Mark Haskins, branch chief of the USDA Food and Nutrition Service's special investigations unit.
One method thieves use is skimming, in which they install illegal devices on payment terminals to skim recipients’ data and PINs when they swipe their SNAP EBT cards for groceries.
Unfortunately it’s relatively easy to do as most SNAP cards feature magnetic stripes instead of safer chip technology. Two years ago, WRTV Indiana noted that there were 3,000 reports of con artists using skimmers to steal SNAP benefits in the state. (6)
Another common SNAP scam is phishing, in which con artists posting as SNAP employees send recipients email or text messages requesting EBT card information.
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According to USDA investigators, SNAP scams are getting more sophisticated, involving international criminals who commit crimes from thousands of miles away.
In August, Atlanta News First reported that criminals launched a cyberattack on a SNAP benefits call center in Georgia, causing the Department of Human Services to lock some cards — and lock recipients out of their food benefits temporarily (7).
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The pros and cons of the crackdown on SNAP fraud
In 2024, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service set up a National Accuracy Clearinghouse so states could share information to prevent individual SNAP recipients from illegally receiving benefits in multiple states.
But only a handful of states are participating.
Meanwhile, under the Trump administration, the USDA has set up a new rule requiring SNAP recipients to reapply for the benefit every six months, rather than simply recertifying.
The challenge with this is not only do families have to upload pay stubs, leases and IDs through online portals that don’t always work well on phones, the rules and deadlines for reapplication differ by state, and even small mistakes can shut off benefits for months.
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In the meantime, the Government Accountability Office is recommending that the USDA crack down on retailer trafficking in SNAP by increasing penalties and require high-risk retailers to apply for SNAP authorization more frequently, just as it is asking individuals to do.
To reduce skimming scams, the USDA is encouraging states to follow California and Oklahoma’s lead to move to SNAP EBT cards with chips. It is also testing a pilot in which any out-of-state purchases are automatically blocked, as most thefts of SNAP benefits occur out-of-state.
When it comes to more sophisticated scams, the hope may lie in beating the criminals at their own game. States are leaning on algorithms and pattern flags to spot what the algorithm says are suspicious transactions.
But the danger is these systems may treat normal shopping habits as red flags and lock people out of their benefits.
In Kentucky, a judge recently ruled for a Louisville woman who sued the state after it kicked her out of the SNAP program for what it said were fraudulent transactions. The state’s case was based on transaction data it said was suspicious, but the court said its interpretation of the data did not justify the consequence (8).
For now, the government will continue to weigh the costs of SNAP fraud versus the benefits of feeding more than 40 million Americans each year.
Article sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our editorial ethics and guidelines.
U.S. Department of Justice (1); Fox Business (2); Congress.gov (3); Mercatus Center George Mason University (4); U.S. Department of Agriculture (5); WRTV (6) Atlanta News First (7); AP News (8)
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Will Kenton is a personal finance writer with a Master's degree in Economics who has been published in Investopedia, AP News, TIME Stamped and Business Insider among other publications.
