WESTFIELD, Mass. (WGGB/WSHM) -- A Chicopee smoke shop employee is now under arrest, after being accused of turning food stamps into cash and Red Bull. Now, the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts says that arrest exposes a bigger problem: thousands of families who play by the rules can’t get the help they’ve already earned.

Andrew Morehouse, the Food Banks’ Executive Director, has spent his career helping families navigate the state’s food assistance system; a system that is now failing them. Right now, two out of three calls to the state benefits office go unanswered; and that silence has cost 11,000 local children their food assistance.

Early March, a federal investigator walked into Adham’s Smoke Shop in Chicopee with an EBT card and walked out with cash. Over several weeks, the undercover agent used SNAP benefits to buy more than $17,000 dollars’ worth of Red Bull, which employee Mohamed Yahiya bought it all back at a steep discount. Yahiya now faces more than a dozen charges, including food stamp trafficking.

However, while that fraud made headlines, Morehouse says the real damage is what it does to the families who never broke a single rule, “People in the public will misunderstand these reports and think that people who receive SNAP benefits are the ones who are scamming or taking advantage or abusing the system when that is not at all the case.”

Morehouse has led the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts for years; overseeing a team that helps families apply for snap benefits and navigate the state system. He says the bigger crisis isn’t fraud. It’s a staffing shortage so severe; the state can’t keep up with demand.

“And so, that means that actually 11,000 children who receive SNAP benefits lost their benefits because their guardian or their parent couldn’t even get through to the Department of Transitional Assistance to address their application status...,” he explains.

The numbers go even further. Morehouse says 400,000 people in Massachusetts are eligible for SNAP benefits right now but aren’t receiving them; simply because they can’t get through on the phone.

The Food Bank and its partners are now pushing state lawmakers for a solution, “...that $30 million investment will leverage $500 million in federal SNAP benefits that people who are legally eligible for them will be able to receive them and then spend their SNAP benefits here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts at stores and supermarkets to buy food to put on their table...” Morehouse calls it a 16,000% return on investment.

The Food Bank says the math is simple: fund the caseworkers, answer the calls, and feed the kids. The harder question is whether the state is listening.

The Chicopee case remains under investigation. Meanwhile, anyone looking for help with food assistance can click here.

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