LEHIGH CO., (WOLF) \u2014 A suspended employee of the Lehigh County Assistance Office faces six felony charges in an investigation involving 48 EBT cards and more than $20,500 in allegedly misused SNAP benefits.<\/p>\n
Sheila McDonald, 46, of Pittsburgh, worked as a clerical supervisor and EBT coordinator, responsible for securing cards mailed to recipients. Prosecutors say the cards were used in more than 270 unauthorized transactions totaling $20,558.61. <\/p>\n
The investigation began in November 2025 after a recipient\u2019s card never arrived, but investigators found that someone had made four transactions with it. Authorities allege McDonald activated that card using the recipient\u2019s personal information. Surveillance video later showed a person identified as McDonald withdrawing cash and making purchases with the card, according to lehighdaily.com.<\/p>\n
An unidentified man told investigators that McDonald repeatedly gave him EBT cards and their PINs in exchange for crack cocaine. He said he believed she obtained the cards through her job, authorities said.<\/p>\n
McDonald is charged with theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception, access device fraud, receiving stolen property and two counts of criminal conspiracy. The Department of Human Services suspended her, removed her system access and issued replacement cards to affected households, according to the district attorney\u2019s office. <\/p>\n
A criminal complaint was filed Oct. 2. As of Monday, McDonald had not been arraigned, and no preliminary hearing date was listed. She is presumed innocent unless proven guilty<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEHIGH CO., (WOLF) \u2014 A suspended employee of the Lehigh County Assistance Office faces six felony charges in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120],"class_list":["post-311094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}