Scammers steal billions of dollars in food stamps from needy people every year. Why isn’t Congress doing anything to stop them?
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MAGA hacks like Rollins seldom acknowledge that a SNAP beneficiary is likelier to be the victim of a crime rather than its perpetrator. So-called targeted benefit fraud is common, costing an estimated $12 billion per year. And Rollins has to know that a thief who steals directly from a SNAP recipient is much likelier to be a hardened criminal than a SNAP recipient who bends or breaks some eligibility rule.
“This is white-collar crime,” Mark Haskin of the Agriculture Department’s special investigations unit told an Atlanta TV news reporter last year. “This is organized crime.” A Romanian transnational mafia gang known as the Dorneanu Organized Crime Group, for instance, allegedly led by one Mihai Dorneanu, stole over $180 million from California welfare funds, leading in February 2025 to 11 arrests by Romanian authorities, five by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and four by local police. Two members remained at large after they cut their ankle monitors and jumped bail in 2023. One of them was later arrested in Australia.
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Vilsack’s successor, Rollins, included SNAP benefit theft among the items targeted in her “National Farm Security Action Plan,” but her main solution was to punish retailers judged insufficiently vigilant. In general, Rollins seems more preoccupied with chasing undocumented immigrants, penalizing states that didn’t suspend full SNAP payments during the government shutdown, and making all SNAP recipients reapply for benefits. Addressing actual SNAP fraud committed by real criminals like the Dorneanu Organized Crime Group is a low priority.