Four people who allegedly took part in the theft of public assistance benefits from low-income California families have been arrested and face federal prosecution in San Diego, the U.S. Attorney’s Office has announced .
Prosecutors say the recently arrested defendants are part of an ongoing spike in benefits thefts from people with compromised EBT accounts.
More than 52 people have been charged in San Diego since 2023 for stealing CalWORKS benefits, which the U.S. Attorney’s Office said resulted in losses of at least $4 million from hundreds of California victims.
Prosecutors say that through the use of card skimmers, victims’ EBT account information is stolen, re-encoded onto “cloned” cards, and their account money then withdrawn at ATMs in the pre-dawn hours before funds are disbursed from the state.