A tale of two Michiganders

Two Michigan women each received money from state taxpayers. But their similarities ended there.

While Michigan resident Kaiysha Warner slept, a criminal stole $762 of her food stamp benefits, from more than 680 miles away in Massachusetts. She found out through a notice that appeared on her phone, which revealed a transaction she had no part of.

Michigan won’t reimburse those stolen benefits, offered through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, leaving her and her family hungry.

About 1.4 million Michiganders with low incomes spend public money using Bridge Cards at grocery stores, farmers markets and gas stations. The card-swipe technology on a standard Bridge card is vulnerable to data theft by criminals who can install skimmers on the card readers that process electronic payment cards. The dollar amount of reported food stamp fraud increased from fiscal year 2023 to 2024 by 387%, according to documents Michigan Capitol Confidential obtained through a records request.

Michigan sent over 269,000 replacement cards in 2024, CapCon reported.

The state could reduce much of this fraud by spending $8 million to embed microchips in the cards, but it won’t do that. The health department did not respond to more than 10 requests for comment, so CapCon is pursuing an open records request instead, at a cost of nearly $500.

Another state beneficiary, Metro Detroit businesswoman Fay Bedoun, pocketed a $10 million state grant in March 2024 after donating $16,000 to the reelection campaign of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. She spent $100,000 to be a group founder of the campaign, $4,500 on a coffeemaker and $11,000 on a plane ticket.

Bedoun paid her employees well, documents show. One person, designated a partner, pocketed more than $4,600 at a rate of $720 an hour.

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CapCon obtained this information through one of more than 200 record requests it has filed since the start of 2025.

After discovering that SNAP fraud in Michigan increased by nearly 400% in 2024, CapCon has filed more than 30 records requests to learn more.

It is hard to track SNAP fraud, and many local government deny record requests.

The cities of Ann Arbor, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Livonia and Westland have all denied or ignored records requests seeking SNAP fraud reports in 2024. The city of Kalamazoo gave CapCon data about SNAP fraud. Its record showed 30 allegations of SNAP fraud. The city of Flint counted two SNAP fraud reports, while Dearborn reported 137 cases.

Criminals have stolen benefits nationwide via skimmers, phishing email, and cloned cards. So far, five states have either switched to chipped SNAP cards or are doing so: Alabama, California, Maryland, New Jersey, and Oklahoma, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.