The single mother continues – and beats – Kentucky for having kicked her because she bought food at the store where she worked

The state allegedly alleged that it had made several purchases the same day, attempted to resume her account a few times, entered some invalid pins and sometimes made purchases of “whole dollars” which are unlikely during typical grocery shopping.

The woman from Salyersville to Appalachian Kentucky had an explanation: she worked at the store. She sometimes bought lunch there, then shopped after work. Her child also used his card from time to time.

An administrative hearing officer launched him from the additional nutritional aid program (SNAP) despite everything, based solely on the allegedly suspicious shopping model. She continued – and won.

“It is draconian to withdraw the advantages of the snap of a single mother without clear and convincing evidence that intentional traffic occurred at a time when the food shortage is so widespread,” said Franklin’s county judge Thomas Wingate in his decision in 2023.

A wave of disqualifications

Over the past five years, the Kentucky health and family services firm has brought hundreds of cases of fraud that depend strongly on transactional data in order to revoke people’s food advantages.

Judges, lawyers and legal experts have declared in the interviews and in court documents that this evidence is little revealed. Kentucky public radio has examined dozens of administrative hearing decisions and court documents for the past five years during which the firm has relied on the purchasing models to prove that a person had “treated” or sold, their advantages.

Kentucky is so aggressive to disqualify people from the SNAP advantages that the State is second in the country for administrative disqualifications per capita, behind Florida, according to the latest federal data of 2023.

Over the past decade, Kentucky’s disqualifications have increased from less than 100 in 2015 to more than 1,800 in 2023. And more than 300 others have been accused of selling or using their services since January 2024, according to the files obtained by Kentucky Radio.

Another Franklin county judge in 2023 ordered the office to arrest disqualifying persons on the basis of transactional data, but since the decision, at least three prosecution alleys that the health agency continues to carry such cases.

Transactional data alone cannot prove the intention of committing fraud or showing the real result of an individual transaction, said the law professor of the University of Kentucky, Cory Dodds, adding: “I am not saying that people have not done so, did not commit fraud either, but I do not think that the cabinet in many cases have met their proof of proof.

Faced with punishment, the beneficiaries are in a hurry to give up their audiences

The Kentuckians receive an opinion from their suspicious activity presumed through letters sent by post, in which they are invited to voluntarily give up their rights to a hearing and automatically accept the sentence. During the first offense, it is generally a one -year ban. They are also required to reimburse the total amount that the State says it has misused.

Often these cases involve a relatively low sum of money. The files show that more than 900 people have been launched for “traffic” or abuse for less than $ 1,000 since 2022. The lowest alleged amount was 14 cents.

The state has relied heavily on administrative hearing derogations since 2015 and, by 2023, nearly a quarter of all disqualifications were via renunciation. Some proceedings allege that individuals did not fully understand the consequences of derogations and were encouraged to sign by civil servants.

Kentucky public radio has examined more than two dozen cases since 2020 in which the cabinet has accused an individual of trafficking using only spending models, despite the denial or the lack of response of the participants – and without other evidence or interviews presented, according to administrative hearing decisions.

Kendra Steele, health and family services spokesperson, refused to plan an interview with firm managers after several requests. Steele said in an email that “we have never” brought traffic based solely on transactional data and recognized that it would not be enough to prove the intention.

In response to a different question, Steele wrote the investigation into fraud allegations is to examine income, living situations “and spending models that are revealing of the trafficking”. It did not indicate how one of these factors could be used to prove intentional improper use or the sale of SnAP advantages, or how it differs from understanding transactional data – which is intrinsically a model of expenditure. Steele said in another email that they also question Snap sellers and recipients.

“ It is our Kentuckian compatriots who are hungry ”

About 4 out of 25 Kentuckians suffer from food insecurity, similar to the national rate of approximately 14%, according to an Associated Press Analysis of Us Census Bureau and Feeding America Data.

The USDA will cease to collect and publish statistics on food insecurity after October, saying on September 20 that the figures had become “too politicized”. The decision comes in the wake of federal financing reductions for net net programs on a food and nutritional scale.

During the last financial year, 1 out of 8 Kentuckians benefited from Snap, formerly called food coupons. Food insecurity in the rural areas of Kentucky is even more austere and the legal representation more difficult to find.

“People who benefit from these programs are among the people we have to help the most in this country,” Dodds said. “It is our Kentuckian compatriots who are hungry due to the baseless allegations of waste, fraud and abuse.”

The cabinet rejected the request for KPR of cases on individual fraud accusations from the beginning of 2024 which would include the evidence used in the accusations. But the administrative hearing decisions examined by KPR from 2020 to 2023 included evidence on which the cabinet relied; Hearing officers frequently say that a person had dealt with their services according to the purchasing habits deemed suspicious.

The expert says that civil servants on purchasing data

National legal experts who specialize in SNAP access claim that an excessive exception on transactional data is not specific to Kentucky. Transactional data was initially designed as a tool to identify potential fraud – and not as a way to prove it, said Georgetown law professor David Super.

He studied SNAP disqualifications for decades and has seen many cases where he thinks that transactional data is misinterpreted as direct evidence of reprehensible acts, instead of obliging a state to build cases with witnesses, affidavits, video evidence and advocacy agreements.

In a decision to reduce the administrative hearing of the state -explied state in 2023, an Aboriginal decided that a woman in the city of East McKee in Kentucky had treated her advantages because she had carried out eight consecutive transactions in one year. The decision also said that she had checked her balance several times, made some insufficient attempts at funds and had incorrectly entered her pin number several times.

She lost her instantaneous advantages for a year. In a call, the woman told the state that she had two children and had recently discovered that she was pregnant.

“Everyone forgets to get something and must go back to the store and get it,” she wrote, defending her consecutive purchases.

She received another hearing, but the result has not changed.

Officials of the cabinet recognized in counter-examination during a case in 2023 that consecutive transactions and whole purchases are not prohibited under SNAP rules, and the recipients are not informed that the firm considered them suspect.

But all these things are used as proof – sometimes the only proof – that a person abused his advantages.

Kristie Goff, an Appalred legal aid lawyer in Prestinsburg, in southeast Kentucky, used to see many of these cases, although they refused last year.

“There have been very few cases in the cases I have dealt with, where a customer was unable to give me a perfectly reasonable explanation of these transactions, and none of this was going,” said Goff. “There are no receipts, there are no video sequences to show that someone is doing something wrong. It’s just a number written on a newspaper.”

While saying that the purchasing history are insufficient to prove the milking, the judges of Kentucky have ceased to demand that the state change the way it forms the employees or leads its instant surveys.

State training equipment focuses almost entirely on purchasing models

In response to a request for open files, the firm provided KPR the documents used to train investigators on the violations of the intentional program. They seem to discuss almost exclusively transactional data, especially investigating consecutive payments, significant transactions and purchases of whole dollars.

In 2020, Michigan appeal judges decided that transactional data alone is never sufficient to prove that a company – or a person – has fraudulently used the SNAP benefits.

Dodds believes that this should be the standard for all states, including Kentucky.

It is in the early stages to systematically examine thousands of hearing decisions on SnAP service traffic between 2020 and 2023. Data of around 700 decisions in 2020 already show that many Kentuckians have been refused benefits before the State presents what it considers as real proof of guilt.

“There may be a handful of cases where I would say there were real proof that they had done something bad,” said Dodds. “There was one where a woman was on the phone with the audience agent when she was actively trying to sell her advantages. … But the cases with non -transactional data are extremely rare.”

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Associated Press data journalist Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report.

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This report is part of a series called Sowing Resilience, a collaboration between the Institute for the Network of Rural News of the Institute for Non-Lucrative News and the Associated Press focused on how rural communities in the United States sail on food insecurity problems. Nine non -profit editorial rooms were involved in the series: The Beacon, Capital B, Enlated Latino NC, investigation into Midwest, Jefferson County Beacon, Kosu, Louisville Public Media, Maine Monitor and Minnpost. Rural News Network is funded by Google News Initiative and Knight Foundation, among others.

The Department of Health and Sciences of the Associated Press receives the support of the Department of Science Education from Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.