COLORADO SPRINGS — As the holiday season approaches, many of us are making important decisions about what will land on our Thanksgiving tables. But for some families, those decisions are more complicated, especially if there’s not enough money to buy food in the first place.
Unfortunately, for thousands of Coloradans, that struggle has been made worse by stolen SNAP benefits.
MORE | Increase in the number of stolen SNAP benefits reported to Colorado Department of Human Services
“They turn their cheek at people who get food stamps and benefits and stuff like that but I’m a prime example of I work and I’m still allowed to get benefits because I’m under a certain income requirement,” said Colorado Springs resident Brittany Thompson.
Thompson and her family are among the hundreds of people in El Paso County whose SNAP benefits were stolen this year.
“I didn’t know food stamps could get stolen. That’s new to me,” said the mother of three.
She was shocked to find only $4 on her benefits card right before she and her family went grocery shopping in October.
“[For it] To be thousands of people that this happened to and they’re not notifying people because apparently this has been happening for months? Nobody told me anything," she said. "You can send me letters in the mail all month long or every three months to update my stuff. You can put the notifications in the app whenever we need to do our re-determinations but you can't notify us when thousands, probably millions of dollars, has been stolen by the state of Colorado?”
The Colorado Department of Human Services says it has received 4,468 reports of stolen SNAP benefits across the state as of September 2024.
DHS breaks down the number of reports this year:
- 1,021 from Jan-Mar 2024
- 1,421 from April-June 2024
- 2,206 from July-Sept 2024
She reached out to a Department of Human Services office representative after noticing the missing benefits from her account but was disappointed with their response.
“No one asked me at that office, ‘Are you and your family going to be OK this month?’ Not to say that it’s their responsibility, but if you know I’m on benefits, you should be obligated to ask, ‘Hey, is your family going to be OK this month? In the meantime, here’s a list. They have lists of resources they could give us and didn’t,” Thompson said.
So, she turned to social media for guidance and support.
“On Facebook, I had more resources underneath my post in the local group than I did get from DHS,” she said.
Thompson said her online community and job at the Colorado Springs meat market Ranch Foods Direct have been a lifeline for her and her family during the difficult time.
“I know that in the need of an emergency, my boss is amazing. They’re going to make sure my family is taken care of,” she said. “I think about the people that were in a serious bind because they don’t have resources like what I have. I mean it’s almost the holidays. This is not the best time to be doing this to people.”
DHS says as of September 2024, 460 reports of stolen benefits came from El Paso County neighbors and 850 reports came from Pueblo County this year.
These numbers are leaving those impacted the most with questions.
“What are y’all actively doing to help prevent a card from being copied? How were our EBT cards copied in other states? When that’s explained to me, maybe I’ll be able to process it a little better.”
Some advice to prevent your benefits from being stolen, according to DHS.
- Freeze your EBT card to stop new purchases by logging into the ebtEDGE mobile app or Cardholder Portal
- Change your PIN often to prevent fraudulent charges
- Avoid simple PINs
- Don’t share your PIN or card number with others
- Report suspicious activity immediately
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