The Legal Aid Society today urged New Yorkers who have had their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Cash Assistance (CA) benefits stolen to submit a claim for benefit replacement through a newly available online form.

The funds have been made available as a result of national legislation sponsored by United States Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and from advocacy by Legal Aid and other organizations.

Now, all SNAP recipients who have fallen victim to theft after October 1, 2022, and CA recipients who have lost benefits after January 1, 2022, can receive up to two months of replacement benefits immediately.

“A person’s right to critical federal assistance should never be overlooked just because they are victimized, through no fault of their own, by an EBT scheme,” said Alex MacDougall, an attorney in the Civil Law Reform Unit at The Legal Aid Society.  “We strongly encourage our clients and all New Yorkers who have been unfairly deprived of their benefits to apply for replacement immediately.”

Skimming schemes are a form of electric theft that involve the use of a device that is secretly installed at a retail point-of-sale machine that captures the data on a card and remotely transmits it to a thief offsite.

For more information and to begin an application for reimbursement click here.