HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) – An investigation is underway after hundreds of Lone Star cards were charged with authorized charges totaling more than $81,000. ABC13 obtained an arrest warrant naming a state employee as one of the suspects.

Eyewitness News is not naming the employee or her alleged co-conspirator because neither has been charged with a crime.

The Texas Health and Human Services Commission’s Office of the Inspector General launched an investigation in January after an anonymous call was made to the state’s SNAP fraud hotline.

The informant told them that a Department of Health and Human Services employee was stealing SNAP card information and selling it on Facebook and Instagram.

Investigators later discovered that the employee, who works at the West Little York Health and Human Services Department at Acres Homes, had changed the PINs on 211 Lone Star cards from across the state, preventing their rightful owners from using them.

They say another woman who worked in the same office before being fired for unspecified reasons in 2018 worked with the first woman and changed 157 PINs.

The women are subsequently accused of having charged the cards without authorization and selling them to third parties.

In July, investigators say, the first woman confessed to her involvement in the plot. She told investigators that the second woman paid her 50 cents for every dollar of stolen SNAP benefits.

According to investigators, she claimed she did it to pay for the funeral of her deceased son.

A search warrant for the woman’s phone suggests the plot may have begun as early as June 2023. Investigators say she told them it didn’t begin until November 2023.

When Eyewitness News asked the two women named in the search warrant for comment, the second woman claimed she was unaware of the existence of the investigation.

Eyewitness News has also reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services to see if the first woman is still employed, and we are awaiting a response.

For news follow Luke Jones on Facebook, X and Instagram.