A Long Beach mother, who uses Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to feed her three children, but the problem is, she said, that her benefits have been skimmed by scammers despite taking precautions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sydney Moe said she\u2019s been back and forth with CalFresh, California\u2019s version of SNAP. Officials told her that they would reimburse her for the stolen funds. But that\u2019s not going to solve her problem, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c(The funds are) just going to get taken again. I\u2019ve already been locked out of the current card that I have, that I just got this morning,\u201d the single mother of three\u00a0 said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moe was not able to access her CalFresh benefits this month, unable to feed her three children. Her SNAP benefits card was declined at a grocery store, starting in late February.<\/p>\n
\u201cI left everything. I went home. I went to look, and I realized that my pin was changed, and that my account had been drained,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Receipts from her account showed her card was used at stores where she never shopped,\u00a0 20 miles away from her Long Beach home.<\/p>\n
After filing a police report, Moe went to the Long Beach office of the Department of Social Services, which handles the distribution of funds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYea, I got a refund. But then, that disappeared in two days,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
California is only one of two states that reimburses stolen SNAP funds while the federal government doesn\u2019t. But even the reimbursements have limits: California only replaces stolen SNAP money twice a year.<\/p>\n
The LA County posted security recommendations on social media this week, urging CalFresh recipients to not to follow links and use the EBT Edge mobile app, which Moe does.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Having no other option,\u00a0 Moe said she doesn\u2019t have any food for her kids.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMy youngest is a year (old), and my oldest is 12. They really rely on me to support them,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople are just taking from me, and I have no way to get it back.\u201d<\/p>\n
NBC Los Angeles asked the Department of Public Social Services whether it could refund Moe one more time, but state agency officials said the single mother of three would have to go through the same process to request a card replacement and reimbursement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Officials also urged, if your funds are stolen, they should call the number on the back of the EBT card immediately.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Long Beach mother, who uses Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to feed her three children, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[13074,131,133,132],"class_list":["post-249341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-fraud-false-statements","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}