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What percentage of SNAP benefits are illegally sold each year?
Executive Summary
The best-established estimates put explicit retail trafficking — that is, SNAP benefits sold for cash — at roughly 1.0–1.6 percent of benefits annually, based on USDA analyses covering 2015–2017 and related estimates [1] [2] [3]. Broader measures of improper payments that include administrative errors, eligibility mistakes and trafficking are markedly higher — roughly 10–12 percent in recent federal estimates, with the GAO reporting 11.7 percent in FY2023 [4] [5]. Recent reporting also documents a sharp short-term rise in reported fraudulent transactions since 2023, but that increase describes dollar thefts and incidents, not a new, validated national trafficking rate [6].
1. Why the headline numbers diverge and what each actually measures
Estimates diverge because analysts measure different phenomena: “trafficking” means SNAP benefits converted to cash through illegal resale or retailer collusion, while “improper payments” is a broader federal accounting category that includes trafficking plus administrative errors and mistaken eligibility. USDA’s trafficking-focused study covering 2015–2017 produced the lower trafficking range near 1.6 percent (roughly $1.27 billion) and other USDA messaging has cited about 1 percent as trafficking declined over 15 years, reflecting the narrower definition [1] [2]. By contrast, GAO and other oversight reviews report improper-payment rates near 10–12 percent, with FY2023 cited at 11.7 percent (about $10.5 billion), because those figures account for many noncriminal program errors that are not “benefits sold” [4] [5]. Understanding the label is essential: quoting an improper-payment rate as “SNAP benefits sold” conflates distinct phenomena and overstates the criminal resale problem.
2. The most-cited trafficking estimate and its evidence window
The commonly cited trafficking estimate between 1.5–1.6 percent comes from the USDA’s National Retailer Trafficking Rate derived from the 2015–2017 study and related analyses; converted to dollars, that range has been presented as roughly $1.08–$1.27 billion annually [1] [3]. These estimates rely on transaction and investigation data specific to retail trafficking, and USDA has emphasized a long-term decline in trafficking as a share of benefits — from higher levels in prior decades to about 1 percent by some USDA summaries [2]. This is the most direct federal estimate of benefits illegally sold, but it is anchored to the mid-2010s study period and the measurement approach used there.
3. What the GAO’s improper‑payment numbers tell us — and what they don’t
GAO and other oversight reports put SNAP improper payments near 10–12 percent, with a recent figure of 11.7 percent for FY2023 equating to about $10.5 billion [4] [5]. These numbers highlight weaknesses in program administration, eligibility verification, and record-keeping as well as fraud. They do not mean all those dollars were “sold” on the street. Many improper payments result from paperwork errors, outdated information, or eligibility calculation mistakes, not criminal trafficking. Presenting GAO’s improper‑payment total as direct evidence of large-scale selling of benefits mischaracterizes the nature of the problem.
4. Recent spike in reported thefts and why it’s not a new trafficking rate
Reporting documented a 55 percent increase in reported fraudulent SNAP transactions between late FY2024 and early FY2025, with accounts of over $100 million in food assistance thefts since 2023 [6]. That reporting signals a troubling operational trend — likely involving card skimming, organized theft rings, or retailer schemes — but it documents incidents and dollar losses over a short window, not a validated national trafficking percentage comparable to USDA’s multi‑year study. Therefore, the spike is a real operational concern that can raise actual loss totals, but it does not, by itself, replace or invalidate the trafficking rate estimates derived from prior methodological studies [6].
5. Political claims, context and the scale of misstatements
Political statements citing “thousands” of illegal EBT uses or tens of thousands of dead people still receiving benefits require context: such counts may be true as raw investigative leads but represent a tiny fraction of the roughly 40–42 million beneficiaries and do not translate into a national trafficking percentage without verification and classification [7]. Officials and commentators sometimes conflate administrative anomalies, investigation counts, and trafficking estimates to dramatize the problem. That conflation creates a mismatch between the narrow, evidence‑based trafficking rate (~1.0–1.6 percent) and broader claims of rampant corruption, which rely on different measures and incomplete incident tallies [7].
6. Bottom line for interpreting “benefits illegally sold” claims
Interpret any claim about “what percentage of SNAP benefits are illegally sold” by first asking: is the source citing trafficking (USDA’s 1.0–1.6 percent range) or improper payments (GAO’s ~11.7 percent)? The most defensible, trafficking‑specific figure from federal analysis is in the 1.0–1.6 percent range [1] [2] [3]. Broader improper‑payment figures are larger and important for oversight but do not measure illegal resale directly [4] [5]. Short‑term increases in fraud reports since 2023 are cause for enforcement and operational response but do not, on their own, rewrite the established trafficking percentage without new, comparable national measurement [6].