Food Stamp Trafficking: FNS Could Enhance Program Integrity by Better Targeting Stores Likely to Traffic and Increasing Penalties

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Every year, food stamp recipients exchange hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits for cash instead of food with retailers across the country, a practice known as trafficking. From 2000 to 2005, the Food Stamp Program has grown from $15 billion to $29 billion in benefits. During this period of time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) replaced paper food stamp coupons with electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards that work much like a debit card at the grocery checkout counter. Given these program changes and continuing retailer fraud, GAO was asked to provide information on (1) what is known about the extent and nature of retailer food stamp trafficking, (2) the efforts of federal agencies to combat such trafficking, and (3) program vulnerabilities. To do this, GAO interviewed agency officials, visited 10 field offices, conducted case file reviews, and analyzed data from the FNS retailer database.