Seems you aren't the only one upset with your govt. I'll drop a linkdump here that should explain things in detail but the TLDR is that the US Federal Govt has a program called 'EBT' (electronic benefits transfer) which provides money for food (and nothing else) to those in need. The US Govt has been wasting 25 BILLION USD a YEAR due to fraud yet instead of fixing shit they've been doing nothing. Only last year did they finally pass a law to require states to reimburse victims. Most victims are victimized from 'out of state' purchases but there's no opportunity for them to block said purchases at all (like 'deny all out of state purchases') which is really weird.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonconstable/2018/04/04/the-facts-about-food-stam...
https://gitnux.org/food-stamp-fraud-statistics/
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/4224015-fraud-is-gobbling-up-one-fifth-of-sn...
https://www.cdiaonline.org/views/2022/09/30/study-snap-fraud-is-staggering-and-c...
https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_4ba7116a-5dee-11ee-ab64-8f11719...
1 - the card is a plain plastic card without a chip; us federal law is stupid and doesn't allow for chip cards to be used (what!?) because boomers gonna boomer; this kind of card is trivially copied
2 - PIN number is the only thing keeping accounts from being emptied; very trivial to attempt every possible PIN until it works (brute forcing); zero compensation for victims up until last year
3 - Despite people begging the US Govt to do something nothing has been done for decades. Certain politicians here want to just cut off the program entirely instead of fixing the fraud.
Doesn't that seem odd though? Hey here's some obvious criminal fraud that could be stopped with some very basic safeguards (restricted to in-state use only, etc) but they won't do that. Why?
Just some food for thought. UK is trashy and US is even worse heh.