Last year, an estimated $19 million in public benefits was stolen from people receiving social services and welfare funds in L.A. County through a process called “skimming,” prompting the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, Jan. 10, to take steps to combat and raise awareness of the problem.
Skimming refers to criminals who secretly install card readers at stores, gas stations and even ATMs that record and steal information encoded on cards that are inserted into them, including EBT cards. The information is then used by criminals to withdraw funds and benefits from the cards.
“Skimming is scamming,” Supervisor Janice Hahn said, adding that the scam targets some of the most economically vulnerable people who rely on public benefits to get by. She said the thefts put people in precarious situations, including the possibility of falling into homelessness.
Introduced by Supervisor Hilda Solis, the board motion instructs the county to develop a multilingual outreach campaign to local businesses and the general public to raise awareness of skimming scams. It also calls for the county to advocate at the state and federal levels for more security measures to protect people using public benefits from scams, by advocating for measures like embedding chips in the EBT cards, and advocating for measures that restore stolen public benefits to victims of skimming scams.
According to the motion, EBT cards are particularly vulnerable to skimming because the cards don’t have embedded chips like many debit and credit cards that allow users to tap their cards on readers to use them, instead of having to insert them into a reader.
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Hector Fernandez says
There are phone vendors on a daily basis, camped out on the sidewalk of many Public Social Services buildings. These vendors enlist people for “free” phones as they come out of the Social Services Offices. I think that authorities should investigate these “free” phone vendor services to assure that they are not the ones actually stealing people’s public benefits.
I do not know what sort of private information these phone vendors ask for when signing people up, but I do know that the people who qualify to receive these “free” phones are usually actively receiving public assistance such as Food Stamps. Please investigate.
Been there had to do that says
They ask to see your drivers license/ state ID, your EBT card and Medi-cal card. All the information is put into their PAD and then usually this is to make sure you are actually on the state programs.
Who know what happens to that information after that.