Joe Biden allowed Romanian crime rings to walk across the southern border and drain food stamp accounts from the most vulnerable Americans.
Now the Secret Service is doing what Biden never bothered to do.
Operation Heat Check just ripped 13 illegal skimming devices out of Miami-area businesses – and the nearly $14 million those devices were set to steal never left a single account.
What Transnational Crime Rings Are Doing to Your Neighbors
These aren't smash-and-grab criminals. They're organized.
Romanian transnational crime networks have turned EBT card skimming into a billion-dollar industry – and they are specifically targeting the most vulnerable Americans to do it.
Here's the playbook: a criminal walks into a gas station, grocery store, or ATM vestibule.
In seconds – while a clerk is distracted – he presses a paper-thin device over the card reader.
That device silently captures every card number and PIN that crosses it.
The stolen data transmits wirelessly to a laptop parked outside.
https://twitter.com/SenPhilWilliams/status/2090780434518908938?s=20
By the time you notice your food money is gone, the criminal is three states away – or back in Bucharest counting cash from 36,000 stolen card numbers.
That last number isn't hypothetical.
One Romanian national arrested in New York in 2024 had sent 36,000 stolen EBT card numbers to an accomplice over three years.
He was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.
Secret Service analysts confirmed the pattern: criminal groups cross into the United States from Eastern Europe, Asia, and Central and South America – in many cases literally crossing the Mexican border – specifically to run skimming operations.
Why Miami and Why Now
Miami is the perfect target.
Millions of tourists cycle through constantly.
Businesses everywhere process payment cards around the clock.
And South Florida has a massive EBT-dependent population – exactly the people these criminals time their attacks around.
Skimming rings know exactly when benefits hit.
They study deposit schedules.
They position their devices in neighborhoods with high concentrations of SNAP recipients – then drain accounts within hours of the monthly deposit.
https://twitter.com/FBIMiamiFL/status/2089721560508637336?s=20
Operation Heat Check sent teams through 378 Miami-area businesses, checking 2,842 point-of-sale terminals, gas pumps, and ATMs.
Thirteen live traps came out.
Each one was set for the next person who swiped a card to buy groceries.
Special Agent in Charge Michael Townsend put it plainly: "Rather than waiting for consumers to become victims, we are working with businesses to help them recognize and report skimming devices before more people are impacted."
That is what proactive law enforcement looks like.
This Is Bigger Than Miami
Operation Heat Check is one piece of a nationwide war the Secret Service has been quietly winning.
In 2025 alone, agents removed more than 400 illegal skimming devices across 22 operations – preventing an estimated $428 million in fraud losses.
New York Field Office: 35 devices seized, $36.5 million saved.
Atlanta: 41 devices pulled, $43.7 million protected.
Boston: 16 devices recovered, $16.7 million locked down.
The pattern is unmistakable.
This is a coordinated national offensive against criminal networks that operated freely for years – because nobody stopped them.
And that brings us to the part that should make every conservative furious.
The federal government made zero security upgrades to EBT cards between 2010 and 2024.
Zero.
Your credit card got chip technology in 2015.
https://twitter.com/IncidentScope/status/2089502540773654614?s=20
Your debit card got it too.
But the USDA – under Biden – left food stamp cards running on magnetic stripes that any Romanian criminal with a $50 device can clone in seconds.
Congress finally authorized chip-enabled EBT cards in August 2024.
Then, four months later, Democrats let the reimbursement program for theft victims quietly expire – meaning the hundreds of thousands of families who had their benefits stolen are now on their own, with no way to get that money back.
The Secret Service is doing its job.
Biden and the Democrats spent four years doing nothing – and the people who paid the price were the working poor they claim to protect.
Sources:
- U.S. Secret Service, "Miami Field Office Operation Heat Check Nets 13 Illegal Skimming Devices, Prevents Estimated $13.5 Million in Fraud Losses," U.S. Secret Service Newsroom, August 20, 2026.
- U.S. Secret Service, "Secret Service Card Skimming Operations Prevent More Than $400 Million in Fraud Loss in 2025," U.S. Secret Service Newsroom, January 7, 2026.
- U.S. Secret Service, "U.S. Secret Service New York Field Office Skimming Operation Nets 35 Illegal Devices, Saves $36.5 Million," U.S. Secret Service Newsroom, June 26, 2026.
- U.S. Department of Justice, "Romanian Man Sentenced to 10 Years in Federal Prison for Skimming Tens of Thousands of Welfare Cards at ATMs," U.S. Attorney's Office, Central District of California, 2025.
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, "Romanian National Sentenced for Bank Fraud After HSI Los Angeles Disrupts Transnational Criminal Organization," ICE Newsroom, June 17, 2026.
