INDIANA — Jayeleauna Lewis’s $486 in monthly food assistance was spent in minutes, even though her Electronic Benefits Transfer card was still in her wallet. The transactions appeared at eight stores across New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania while the 20-year-old Indiana mother was at home with her 3-year-old daughter. The money vanished shortly after it was deposited on Sept. 13. Lewis said she was heartbroken because the benefits were how she fed her daughter. She later learned Indiana would not replace the stolen funds. Investigators and cybersecurity experts say one possible explanation is card skimming: thieves install devices on payment terminals to capture card information, then use copied details to make purchases. Lewis said she had swiped her EBT card at a gas station about two weeks before the theft. Magnetic stripes, still used on many food assistance cards, are more vulnerable to copying than embedded chips. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s inspector general projected that about $233 million in food assistance may have been stolen over the past two years, largely through skimming. In most states, recipients cannot get stolen benefits replaced. A temporary federal program reimbursed more than $320 million to nearly 670,000 households from October 2022 through December 2024, but that federal recourse has ended. The gap in protections has left families to absorb losses that banks typically refund to debit and credit card customers. Congress excluded SNAP recipients from federal protections for unauthorized transactions in 1996, according to a 2025 Government Accountability Office report. Lewis’s mother, Johna Hammontree, said she has been using money intended for rent, bills and her own groceries to help her daughter and granddaughter get by. “Whatever I need to pull from financially to make sure that she’s okay,” Hammontree said. The theft is part of a broader vulnerability in a program that still relies largely on cards with magnetic stripes. The U.S. Secret Service says organized criminal groups target food benefits, often moving quickly to spend stolen funds on goods that can be resold. Federal investigators have pursued skimming operations, but arrests alone have not stopped devices from being installed again, said Michael Peck, an assistant special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Criminal Investigative Division. Chip-enabled EBT cards can make copying card information harder, but fewer than a third of states have upgraded or announced plans to do so, according to the USDA. California began issuing chip cards in 2025 and reported an 83% decline in theft of food and cash benefits. The Government Accountability Office has estimated chip cards cost about 10 times as much to produce as magnetic-stripe cards, with initial state transitions potentially costing millions of dollars. States’ ability to make those investments may be further constrained by federal funding changes that began this month. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act cut federal support for states’ SNAP administrative costs by half while requiring states to focus on reducing payment error rates, which can trigger financial penalties. At least five states have said they plan to delay chip-card upgrades or related investments because of the funding changes, according to a survey by the American Public Human Services Association and the Urban Institute. Kathryn Larin, a Government Accountability Office director who has examined SNAP fraud prevention, said reduced funding could make it harder for states to devote money to preventing card theft. The USDA, meanwhile, has blamed states for what it called years of inaction against skimming. Some states advise recipients to change their PINs regularly or lock their cards between purchases. But those steps can be difficult for people without smartphones or reliable access to apps, Larin said, and they leave much of the burden on recipients rather than upgrading the system. Congress is considering proposals to require more secure cards or restore stolen benefits. A chip-card provision is included in the Senate version of the Farm Bill, but not the House version, leaving its prospects uncertain. For Lewis, the policy debate has meant getting through the month without the food assistance she expected. Her mother has helped cover groceries, but the stolen money has forced the family to make difficult choices about other expenses.