EBT Skimmers Are Draining Millions of Dollars From the Neediest Americans

On a warm September night in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Crystal Cork started her Mercury Mountaineer and made her way to a nearby US Bank ATM. Back in Sacramento, California, where Cork and her five children live, the clock had just struck 12 a.m. Around midnight at the beginning of every month, millions of dollars in welfare payments traditionally flow into the bank accounts of low-income families across the US. Cork was driving through Green Bay in the middle of the night in a race to withdraw her money before anyone else got to it.

Recently, Cork had encountered a peculiar and stressful problem: Other people had apparently gained access to her monthly benefits. In three separate instances, she’d arrived at an ATM to withdraw these benefits in cash only to discover the bulk of her balance had already been siphoned away. According to bank records, the mystery withdrawals had taken place at ATMs she’d never visited.