Eight people have been charged with stealing more than $7 million from SNAP cards, commonly known as food stamps. The money allegedly went toward, among other things, luxury cars, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said.
District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Nadia Shihata, commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigation, announced the indictment on Thursday. The charges include criminal conspiracy, grand larceny and identity theft. According to investigators, the group’s leader was 34-year-old Belal Hauter.
The scheme ran from April 2023 to September 2025. The defendants allegedly set up merchant accounts for real or fictitious delis, bodegas and grocery stores, and then obtained payment terminals that process EBT cards. They got card numbers and PINs mainly with skimmers, then made duplicate cards.
The group tracked when benefits were deposited into accounts and emptied them almost instantly. The operation was run partly from the back room of a deli in Yonkers and partly from hotel rooms. Thousands of families were affected. Some have still not gotten their money back, and some were left without money for food on the day their benefits arrived.
The defendants allegedly used the stolen money to buy several luxury cars and sent tens of thousands of dollars abroad, including to Yemen. “The defendants emptied the accounts before legitimate SNAP recipients had a chance to buy food,” Bragg said.
KN