The Agriculture Department is stepping up a nationwide crackdown on food stamp fraud, and Brooke Rollins says the agency is close to closing a loophole that has allowed some people to qualify for benefits under rules conservatives have long attacked.
Rollins posted on X this week that one state has 14,000 SNAP recipients who also drive luxury vehicles such as Ferraris, Bentleys and Lamborghinis. She said USDA is working to shut down the Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility policy used to qualify for SNAP, the largest federal anti-hunger program in the United States.
That push comes as Rollins has put a series of eye-popping numbers on the record. She told Business this week that the department was “getting very, very close to being able to fix that” loophole, and on Thursday night she said USDA had found 500,000 people receiving more than one benefit illegally. She also said the agency had found 244,000 dead people on the rolls and that the figures reflected only red states.
Rollins said USDA had arrested 895 different people in the last year for illegally using the food stamp system. The department is now combing through state data from states that agreed to turn it over, a process Rollins has said began on her first day on the job.
The pressure on the program is not new, but the scale of the fraud claims has sharpened the argument around it. USDA data shows 4.2 million fewer food stamp recipients during President Trump’s first year in office, a decline backers of tighter rules often cite as proof that stronger eligibility checks can change caseloads quickly.
There is also state-level evidence fueling the crackdown. Jenny Rae Le Roux said California alone loses nearly $14 million every day from SNAP to EBT skimming, out-of-state and foreign-country beneficiaries, and eligibility lapses, adding that technology already exists to close every gap quickly.
In March, Digital reported on Rob Undersander, a Minnesota man who said he was able to qualify for food stamps despite being a millionaire. Undersander has testified on the issue in Minnesota and before Congress, giving supporters of tighter asset checks a case study they have used to argue the system is too easy to game.
An America First Policy Institute Health & Harvest Campaign Director said reintroducing basic guardrails like an asset test is a common-sense step to restore integrity, ensure benefits go to those who truly need them and protect the long-term viability of the program. Rollins’ latest comments suggest USDA is not just talking about reform anymore. It is trying to make the rules harder to exploit, and she says the fix is now close.
