A state auditor told Congress Wednesday that Ohio’s food assistance program is likely suffering from “millions of dollars” in fraud and improper spending, and suggested similar results are happening in other states on Wednesday.
David Yost, the Buckeye state’s auditor, testified during a House Agriculture Committee hearing on ways to fight fraud in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the federally funded, state administered program that provides monthly nutritional support to low-income households in the form of an electronic benefit transfer card.
Ohio received an estimated $2.5 billion in SNAP benefits for fiscal 2015, and Yost found $56.7 million of those benefits were spent either out-of-state or in unusual circumstances. The results came after a six-month audit by Yost’s office that aimed to identify possible SNAP weaknesses by tracking benefit card data usage.
“The numbers we are seeing raise questions about the integrity of the administration,” Yost said. “Every dollar wasted or fraudulently spent is a dollar that could be used for its intended purpose: to feed the poor.”
While current law allows SNAP recipients to use benefit cards in other states, Yost said he was surprised to discover more than one-third of the $28.7 million that was spent out of state had been spent in non-bordering states such as Florida and Texas.
Some committee members rebutted Yost by noting that some SNAP recipients had to travel to other states for work. “How do you come to a conclusion there’s a significant fraud in Ohio without a basis for that conclusion?” Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, asked Yost.
“Nobody is looking at this stuff,” replied Yost. “When matches come back to counties, they’re under-resourced. When you look at money that’s being spent on even dollar transactions, or $1,500 of groceries in one hour – really?”
Jessica Shahin, an associate administrator of the program, testified that it was “very common” for SNAP recipients to use their card in other states.
In addition to out-of-state spending, part of the “unusual activity” identified in the audit involved more than 180,000 instances of SNAP recipients making even-dollar transactions, such as transactions for exactly $100 and zero cents, and said that could be a sign of fraud as well.
Yost’s audit, also included the discovery of more than 30 deceased people still receiving benefits a year after their death. Other cases involved a person making multiple purchases at the same retailer within the same hour, and someone who spent the same amount at the same grocery store the same time every month for six months in a row.
Yost said these discoveries were not exclusive to Ohio, and added that although only a quarter of states had undergone similar audits, the results were similar throughout the country.
Chairman Michael Conaway, R-Texas, said the issue was worthy of several hearings in order to best understand and determine how to move forward.
“Forty-five million Americans are dependent on this,” Conaway said. “The rest of Americans who are paying for this need to know it’s being administered correctly and properly.”
