Manhattan prosecutors have indicted eight people accused of running a scheme that drained more than $7 million in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits from thousands of New Yorkers, using cloned EBT cards and fake deli accounts to siphon off the money between April 2023 and September 2025.
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office and the city's Department of Investigation announced the indictment, alleging the group created fraudulent merchant processing accounts tied to delis, bodegas and grocery stores, then repeatedly swiped stolen EBT cards to pay themselves, according to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. As FOX 5 New York reported, authorities say they busted a major fraud ring involving EBT that the Manhattan DA says involved millions of dollars.
Prosecutors allege 34-year-old Belal Hauter led the conspiracy, opening or directing others to open merchant processing accounts using the names of existing or fictitious delis. The scheme's foot soldiers allegedly relied on stolen EBT account numbers and PINs, largely harvested through card skimmers, to manufacture cloned versions of recipients' benefit cards, per the DA's office.
Luxury Cars and Overseas Wire Transfers
The office says the stolen proceeds were funneled into multiple luxury vehicles and tens of thousands of dollars sent to Yemen. The defendants face charges of conspiracy in the fourth degree, grand larceny and identity theft, though the DA's office emphasizes the charges remain allegations and the defendants are presumed innocent.
Thousands of victims were affected over the roughly two-and-a-half-year span of the alleged scheme, the same announcement states. In response, DOI Commissioner Nadia Shihata said New York State plans to roll out chip-enabled EBT cards in the first quarter of 2027, a technology upgrade meant to make the kind of skimming and cloning described in this case harder to pull off.
Part of a Wider Pattern of SNAP Theft
This is not the only large-scale EBT fraud case to hit the New York area in recent memory. A separate scheme charged six people, including a USDA employee, in an alleged fraud and bribery scam that generated more than $66 million in unauthorized SNAP transactions, according to FOX10. That group allegedly supplied roughly 160 unauthorized EBT terminals to stores across the region, which processed more than $30 million in illegitimate transactions, the outlet reported. Federal prosecutors in that case also allege the USDA employee sold hundreds of EBT license numbers, enabling more than $36 million in fraudulent redemptions at unauthorized stores.
Electronic benefit theft has become a persistent headache for the city's safety-net system. The Office of the Brooklyn Borough President has noted that the city's Department of Social Services and Human Resources Administration reported nearly 95,000 low-income households had their SNAP and cash assistance benefits stolen through electronic fraud in the prior year, with $47.7 million in losses, according to testimony before the City Council Committee on General Welfare.
No details have been released about the identities of the seven other defendants beyond Hauter, nor has the DA's office disclosed an arraignment schedule or whether any of the alleged proceeds, including the luxury vehicles, have been recovered. For now, the case concerns an alleged EBT fraud scheme as the state works toward rolling out more secure, chip-enabled benefit cards.
