How common is fraud in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in 2023 and 2024?

1. What advocates and watchdogs are actually claiming — a tight summary that exposes the disagreement

Federal watchdogs and independent analysts converge on a clear headline: improper payments in SNAP rose into double digits in FY2023, producing an estimated $10 billion-plus of overpayments. The Government Accountability Office put the FY2023 improper payment rate at about 11.7 percent, up slightly from 11.5 percent the prior year, and described this as a continuing government-wide concern that totals trillions of dollars across programs since 2003. Policy papers and think-tank analyses published in 2025 repeat similar aggregate dollar figures while framing them as evidence that fraud and waste remain significant and that enforcement and oversight investments have not kept pace. Those sources stress different remedies and causal emphases—some focus on retailer trafficking, others on state-level administrative errors—revealing a debate over root causes and policy responses ^{[1] [3]}.

2. The government numbers: what the GAO, USDA and CRS actually measured and what they did not

Federal reports quantify “improper payments,” a category that combines fraud, administrative error, and recipient mistakes, not fraud alone. The National Payment Error Rate (NPER) reported for FY2023 is about 11.68 percent and corresponds to roughly $10.5–$10.7 billion in overpayments; the Congressional Research Service cautioned that NPER is not a direct fraud metric because it includes unintentional errors. USDA and its Office of Inspector General have acknowledged shortcomings in fraud-risk assessment and recommended strengthening controls, but they have not produced a single, definitive fraud-only estimate for 2023 or 2024. The federal documentation therefore supports the scale of improper payments but explicitly warns that equating that number with fraud overstates what the data prove ^{[2] [4] [5]}.

3. Why “improper payments” and “fraud” get conflated—and why that matters for policy

Analysts emphasize that conflating improper payments with fraud leads to misleading headlines about program integrity. The improper-payment total captures errors from eligibility determinations, reporting lags, and administrative casework as well as intentional wrongdoing. GAO and CRS assessments note that only a subset of the improper-payment dollars are confirmed as fraudulent trafficking or intentional misrepresentation, while much reflects procedural weaknesses in state administration and federal oversight. Policy responses diverge accordingly: if most improper payments are administrative, investments in staffing and IT will help; if trafficking is dominant, criminal enforcement and retailer penalties are needed. Current multi-source evidence therefore supports a nuanced policy approach tied to improved measurement, not a single punitive assumption ^{[1] [2]}.

4. What the evidence says about trafficking and retailer misconduct specifically

Available measures of retailer trafficking are narrower and older: the National Retailer Trafficking Rate estimates from the mid-2010s put trafficking near 1.6 percent in certain multi-year samples, equivalent to roughly $1.27 billion in those years, but more recent trafficking-specific estimates are limited. GAO and policy reports in 2024–2025 flag trafficking as a persistent problem and recommend stiffer penalties and improved retailer monitoring, while state reports referenced by analysts indicate high variability—some states report extremely elevated overpayment rates tied to local administrative issues. The bottom line is that trafficking is real and policy-relevant, but the share of FY2023 improper payments attributable to trafficking versus administrative error remains uncertain absent better, up-to-date trafficking-specific audits ^{[2] [1] [6]}.

5. Reforms proposed and oversight gaps that shape 2024–2025 debate

Across GAO, USDA OIG, CRS, and independent policy analyses, consistent recommendations emerged in 2024–2025: strengthen fraud risk assessments, create clearer program-integrity leadership, improve data and state oversight, and consider tougher retailer sanctions. Think tanks argue for structural reforms such as an office of program integrity and allowing states stronger recoveries for detected fraud; GAO urged better trafficking estimates and improved USDA oversight. These proposals reflect diagnostic disagreement about where failures occur—federal oversight, state administration, retailer behavior, or beneficiary misreporting—but they align on one point: current measurement and enforcement systems are inadequate for distinguishing fraud from other improper payments ^{[5] [1] [3]}.

6. The bottom line for understanding SNAP fraud in 2023–2024 and unavoidable caveats

The clearest, evidence-based conclusion is that FY2023 saw about $10–10.7 billion in SNAP improper payments (roughly 11.7 percent), and that this figure rose slightly from the prior year; however, this is not a direct fraud tally. Multiple federal and independent reviews through mid-2025 document persistent improper payments and recommend measurement and enforcement upgrades to parse fraud from error. Any statement that SNAP “had $10 billion of fraud” compresses complex categories into a single label; the credible factual posture is that SNAP experienced substantial improper payments in 2023, with fraud a material but not fully quantified component, and that 2024–2025 oversight reviews pressed for better data and stronger controls ^{[1] [3]}.