Undercover federal agents spent months walking into New York City corner stores with SNAP benefit cards and asking to buy things the program does not allow. Enough stores said yes that the Department of Agriculture has now taken action against 170 of them, in all five boroughs, in one sweep.
USDA announced “Operation SNAP Back” on Thursday, September 18, 2026. The agency says hundreds of undercover visits turned up two kinds of fraud: stores trading benefits for cash at a discount, and stores ringing up alcohol, cigarettes and household goods on cards that are supposed to buy groceries. Every one of the 170 had passed the paperwork to accept SNAP.
Story Snapshot
- 170 New York City retailers face administrative action, from warnings to permanent disqualification from the program.
- The two violations: “trafficking” (benefits swapped for cash) and selling ineligible items such as alcohol and non-food goods.
- USDA has not released the store names or the outcome for each one; appeals run through the agency and then federal court.
- The city sweep is part of a national integrity push USDA says has already prevented $5.8 billion in losses this year.
Where This Stands Right Now
The 170 actions are administrative, not criminal, which means a store can lose its SNAP terminal without anyone being charged. Criminal cases, when they come, usually follow the same evidence: federal prosecutors in New York charged a ring last year that ran more than $66 million in illegal transactions through unauthorized terminals, with help from a government employee who leaked internal lists. USDA says more referrals from this sweep are possible.
WIDESPREAD NYC FRAUD!!! USDA just hit 170 New York City SNAP retailers after hundreds of undercover visits in all five boroughs!!!
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Operation SNAP Back ran through bodegas and grocery stores. Investigators charged tr*fficking, swapping EBT for cash.
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They also charged stores… pic.twitter.com/AiTgWG5DEm— Blue Lives Matter (@bluelivesmtr) September 19, 2026
How The Scheme Works
A trafficking store swipes a SNAP card for, say, $100 of “groceries,” hands the cardholder $50 in cash and keeps the rest when the government reimburses the full amount. The cardholder gets money that can be spent on anything; the store gets a markup on taxpayer funds; the food the program was meant to buy is never purchased. The ineligible-item version is simpler: a bottle of liquor rung up as a bag of rice.
What Happens Next
Disqualified stores can appeal, and honest retailers caught by a clerk’s mistake often do. The larger question for New York is whether the sweep changes behavior at the roughly 15,000 stores in the city that accept SNAP. USDA’s own numbers say the program’s fraud problem is concentrated in a small share of retailers; the 170 are its answer to who those retailers are.
Sources:
townhall.com, fox4beaumont.com, theepochtimes.com, fna.usda.gov, nyc.gov
