Texas woman forced to pay government back nearly $9,000 in SNAP benefits due to administration mistake

Critics of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) rail against fraud in the federal program that provides roughly $110 billion in benefits to low-income families to buy food. Federal investigators fear stolen benefits may be much higher than states are reporting, perhaps as high as $12 billion per year according to Mark Haskins, branch chief of the USDA Food and Nutrition Service’s special investigations unit.

However, the vast majority of those losses are caused by criminal gangs stealing from beneficiaries and rarely SNAP recipients intentionally falsifying data to milk the system. In fact, the lion’s share of payment errors are the result of honest mistakes and clerical errors more or less evenly split between recipients and states according to Food and Nutrition Service data from 2019.

Either way, beneficiaries are the ones who get hurt the most. As one 85-year-old widow in Texas found out, even when it is the state that makes the mistake, the beneficiary is still on the hook to repay.

“Hopefully they’ll be hiring old ladies at that point”

Take the case of Jerralee King. She was approved for SNAP benefits after applying in 2021. She received between $112 and $348 a month over three and a half years for a total of $8,927 reports Houston-area ABC ‘13 Investigates’. Living off of her Social Security benefits, she told the outlet that the extra money “made a big difference… I didn’t have to worry. I knew that I had enough to sustain me.”

However, In March she received a letter from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which disburses the federal funds, telling her that due to an incorrect input for her household resources she was actually eligible for SNAP benefits adding: “The overpayment occurred as a result of AGENCY Error.”

Despite it being the state’s mistake, she was told that she has to repay the full amount. She’s now looking at picking up a job so that she can afford to repay the money telling 13 Investigates: “Hopefully they’ll be hiring old ladies at that point.”

How SNAP overpayments are recovered

It is rare that people are criminally charged for overpayments, and only happens in the case that someone knowingly commits fraud. Those who are told that they have to repay excess money that the received in SNAP benefits have a few options.

One, the beneficiary can appeal within 30 or 90 days of receiving the notice and request a hearing where they can provide documentation to support their claim. Those who may not be able to cover the basic costs of living can request hardship relief, which could see the amount reduced or even waived.

Otherwise, the person can repay the money installments or all at once, if possible. Or the state will garnish a percentage of future SNAP payments, or Social Security payments, typically 10% when the mistake was unintentional.

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