The Agriculture Secretary has a number she uses to describe the people leaving the food-stamp rolls: "around 700,000 people fraudulently using SNAP rolls since February 2025," a figure Brooke Rollins calls "the tip of the iceberg." [1] With the law's anniversary tomorrow and USDA's new payment-error report making the rounds, that framing is due for a weekend of repetition. The fine print says something else.
Fraud is a word with a definition
Fraud requires intent - lying to get benefits you know you do not qualify for. As Georgetown law professor David Super puts it: "there is no such thing as accidental or inadvertent fraud." [1] The government tracks the real thing: fraud disqualifications ran 41,476 in 2023, against roughly 42 million people on the program - about one-tenth of one percent. USDA's own research calls SNAP fraud "quite rare." [1][3]
The $10 billion "improper payments" figure now circulating is not a fraud number either: it is overwhelmingly unintentional over- and underpayments - a caseworker's math error, a form filed late - and the government's own accountability office pegs actual fraud closer to $1 billion. [2]
Data
| SNAP enrollment decline in one year | 4,200,000 |
|---|---|
| Actual fraud disqualifications, 2023 | 41,476 |
What actually emptied the rolls
Enrollment fell from 42.8 million in January 2025 to 38.6 million a year later - 4.2 million people - as the new law's work-documentation requirements phased in. [4] More than 3.5 million lost access between last July and February alone; Arizona's rolls fell by half. [3] These are the removals being rebranded: people who missed a paperwork deadline, could not document 80 hours, or gave up on the process. Whatever one thinks of those rules, failing to file a form is not fraud, and no USDA release has shown that any share of the 700,000 - let alone all of them - were confirmed fraud cases. [1]
The honest version
There is real fraud in every large program, and the 41,476 disqualifications prove the system catches some of it; more enforcement against trafficking and skimming would be welcome on every side. The claim under review is different: it takes a paperwork-driven enrollment decline about one hundred times the size of the annual fraud count and assigns the whole thing criminal intent. [1][3][4] In the counties where the rolls fell hardest, the people inside that word are a neighbor whose hours got cut below the documentation line, a grandmother raising grandkids who missed a recertification letter. Calling them fraudsters does not make the grocery money stretch further. It just makes the cut easier to defend. [3]
