Most Wheat Thins Claimants Got $6.07 in January. Since September 11 They Report a Second Payment of About $49 — Eight Times the First — With Only 111,388 of 1,361,505 Claims Valid (Kroll Rejected 863,825 as Fraud) and Awards Capped at $20, About $4.8 Million Was Left After Round One, by Our Arithmetic. There Is No New Claim Form.

You cannot file a Wheat Thins claim anymore. Claim forms had to be submitted online by 11:59 p.m. Pacific or postmarked by July 7, 2025, and Kroll reported in November: “As of November 17, 2025, Kroll has not received any late Claim Form submissions.” On December 12, 2025 Judge Chhabria signed the final approval order and the judgment, which reads: “The claims of Plaintiffs and the Settlement Class are dismissed with prejudice.” Nobody opted out, so everyone in the class is bound by the release whether or not they filed. Any site offering a Wheat Thins claim form today is not part of the court process. The money now arriving goes only to people whose claims were approved and who cashed or accepted the first payment in January.

The case began on October 13, 2022, when David Wallenstein sued Mondelez International, Mondelez Global and Nabisco in San Francisco. His complaint put the theory in one line: “One of the primary grain ingredients in Wheat Thins products is cornstarch, which is a refined grain.” Judge Chhabria certified a California class on September 25, 2024; Mondelez moved for summary judgment in December 2024; the parties reached a deal with the help of retired judge Jay Gandhi, and trial dates were stayed in January 2025. The settlement also resolved two later copies of the case — Werner in New York and Blanco in Illinois — and widened the class to the whole country. Mondelez denied the claims and admitted nothing. Preliminary approval came on April 10, 2025. The final hearing on December 11, 2025 was held on Zoom; the minute entry records that the “Court noted no objectors present in the virtual courtroom” and a total time in court of four minutes.

Why a second payment at all? The agreement fixed the awards at $4.50 to $20 per household and allowed a pro rata adjustment only downward. With roughly 111,000 valid claims, the first round used well under $1 million of a fund that still held more than $5 million after fees and costs. Section 4.7 of the settlement agreement says what happens next: “Any funds that remain unclaimed or remain unused after the initial distribution will be distributed to Class Members who cashed the initial payment, on a pro rata basis, to the extent the cost of such redistribution is considered economical by the Class Administrator, Class Counsel, and MDLZ.” The clause leaves that call to Kroll, class counsel and Mondelez; it does not require a new court order. The court's schedule set July 10, 2026 to determine which first payments never cleared; class counsel filed an accounting on July 31; claimants began reporting the second payment on September 11.

The final approval order defines the class as: “All persons over the age of 18 in the United States and U.S. Territories who, during the Class Period (as defined herein), purchased one of the Class Products in the United States for personal use, and not for resale or distribution.” The notice gives the period as October 13, 2018 to May 9, 2025. The eight products: Original, Reduced Fat, Sundried Tomato & Basil, Big, Ranch, Hint of Salt, Cracked Pepper & Olive Oil and Spicy Sweet Chili Wheat Thins labeled “100% WHOLE GRAIN.” The notice plan had no mailed or emailed notice: Kroll ran ads on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google search and display networks from May 9 to June 23, 2025, and a summary notice appeared in the Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix editions of USA Today. So a payment email today can only relate to a claim filed with that email address.

Who is not in line for round two: anyone whose claim was rejected, and anyone who let the first payment lapse. On October 29, 2025 Kroll sent 369,697 emails tied to claims it flagged as possibly fraudulent, asking for a “Deficiency Cure Form” by November 8; it logged 376 timely and four late responses. Kroll said it would reject any claim with no response. The agreement says Kroll “shall have no obligation to notify Claimants of rejected claims unless otherwise ordered by the Court, and neither Plaintiffs, MDLZ nor Class Members shall have the right to challenge or appeal the Claim Administrator's decision.”

Online filers could pick an electronic payment when they filed; the notice warned, “TO RECEIVE AN ELECTRONIC OR ACH PAYMENT FOR YOUR VALID CLAIM, YOU MUST FILE A CLAIM FORM ONLINE”. The July 31 accounting lists four channels and the share that went through: direct deposit 95.67%, e-Mastercard 98.73%, payment app 95.80%, paper check 68.42% — nearly one paper check in three never cleared. In January, claimants on Reddit and Top Class Actions reported PayPal emails, Venmo deposits, Zelle transfers and a virtual prepaid card; one thread was titled “Is this the Wheat Thins settlement? I never chose PayPal.” In September one wrote: “Payment was sent to Venmo”. Kroll itself told the court that online filers could pick “digital payment options favored by bad faith actors, such as eMastercard and PayPal.”

Is it real? The pattern matches what the agreement provides and what many claimants report, but Kroll has posted no notice about it: the official site added the final judgment and the July 31 accounting to its documents, yet its home page still describes a “proposed” settlement and an upcoming December 11, 2025 hearing, while stating “This is the only authorized website for this case.” To check a payment, call (833) 421-4690 or use the site's contact form. A genuine payment asks for no fee, no bank password and no new claim.

The claim form promised two tiers. Without proof: $4.50 per household, a figure the agreement says came from discovery showing the average buyer purchases one box every two months — 30 boxes over five years — with a refund of $0.15 a box, based on the 3.24% price premium in the plaintiffs' damages model. With proof: $0.15 per unit shown, at least $8 and at most $20 per household. One claim per household. The pro rata clause only ran one way: “If the total value of all approved Claims exceeds the funds available for distribution to Class Members, then the amounts of the Cash Payments will be reduced pro rata, as necessary.”

What the first round actually paid, per the accounting filed July 31, 2026: minimum $6.07, median $6.07, average $6.12, maximum $21.57. By our arithmetic that is exactly $1.57 above the agreement's $4.50 floor and $20 ceiling. The filing does not explain the add-on; it says only that the $685,241.92 distributed “includes interest”. The median equals the minimum, which fits the claim mix: Kroll counted 108,976 valid no-proof claims and 2,412 valid proof claims. Its table also shows 65,053 claims filed with proof, without saying how many of the rest were paid at the no-proof rate — which may explain complaints such as this one on Top Class Actions: “I had a valid claim with over $20 in receipts attached! Why did I only get $6.07?”

The second round has no official figure. What claimants report: “Received a 2nd. payment on this today! $49.39 in MA.” (Top Class Actions, September 14); three Reddit users wrote “$49”, one of them after a first payment of “$6.?? something” without proof; and one thread on r/classactions was titled “Second Wheat Thins Settlement just hit for $109.62, received $13.47 in Jan”. Neither $49.39 report says what that person got in January; if it was the common $6.07, the two ratios match by our arithmetic — $49.39 ÷ $6.07 = 8.14 and $109.62 ÷ $13.47 = 8.14 — which would fit a payment pro rata to what each person was paid in January. On that reading, the $21.57 top claim would get about $175.50 in round two; we have seen no report of that. For a no-proof household, the two rounds together come to about $55.46, roughly twelve times the $4.50 on the claim form.

The agreement provides for no third round: “If such redistribution is not considered economical, or if unpaid funds remain after a second distribution, any unpaid funds will be donated cy pres in equal shares to the Cy Pres Recipients”.

The leftover is not a mystery once the ledger is laid out. The table combines the final approval order of December 12, 2025 with the post-distribution accounting of July 31, 2026, which is marked “An interim post-distribution accounting” because “Not all settlement funds have been distributed.” The uncashed $57,449.69 stays in the fund and is part of what is being paid out now.

The fee is a third of the fund; 10% of it, $333,333.30, is held back until the court releases it. Counsel reported a lodestar of $3,019,150, a multiplier of 1.10. The service awards were $7,500 to David Wallenstein, $5,000 to Matthew Werner and $3,500 each to Ivan Blanco and Kathryn Swiggum.

The claims explain the rest. Kroll received 1,361,505 claims — 3,314 by mail, 1,358,191 online — and rejected 863,825 as “confidently fraudulent” (63%, by our arithmetic), plus 21,269 for householding; 365,023 were deficient. Kroll wrote that such claims “are often submitted electronically through the use of automated software applications that can perform repetitive tasks at rates far beyond human capability” — bots. Kroll had forecast 100,000 or 250,000 valid claims and “up to a million fraudulent claims”. On December 9, 2025 Judge Chhabria ordered that “the parties should explain the criteria used to categorize claims” as “possibly fraudulent” and “confidently fraudulent,” and whether deficient claimants had enough time to respond; part of the answer was filed under seal. Only 111,388 claims, 8.2% of those filed, were valid.

Per person, by our arithmetic: about $4.78 million divided among about 101,946 people who cashed (111,388 valid claims minus the 9,442 “checks not cashed”) is about $46.85, before interest and the cost of the second round. Applying the 8.14 ratio derived from the two reports to the $627,792.23 that was cashed gives about $5.11 million — some $330,000 more than our subtraction. Interest could cover that (the agreement says “Interest on the Settlement Fund shall inure to the benefit of the Class”), but no filing reports it. The counts also come from different dates, so treat these as estimates. If the 8.14 ratio holds and round two clears in full, class members will have received about $5.7 million, some 57% of the fund, by our arithmetic.

How long you have to cash or accept a second payment is not in any document we could find. The only clock in the agreement is written for the first round: “Those Class Members whose payments are not cleared within one hundred and eighty (180) days after issuance will be ineligible to receive a cash payment”. If Kroll applies the same rule, a payment issued September 11 would lapse around March 10, 2027. The safe course is to deposit a check or claim a digital payment now.

What is still open: the second round has to clear; whatever is left then goes in equal shares to the Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law and to Feeding America, followed by a final accounting. The court must also order the release of the $333,333.30 fee holdback; the CourtListener copy of the docket, which updates only when someone pulls it from PACER, shows no such order after the July 31 filing. The label change is due within 12 months of final approval — by December 12, 2026 — after which Mondelez gets an 18-month sell-through period, so boxes with the old wording may stay on shelves until about June 2028 by our count.

Do not confuse the three lawsuits. Werner v. Mondelez (S.D.N.Y., No. 1:24-cv-06957-AT) and Blanco v. Mondelez (N.D. Ill., No. 1:24-cv-13193) made the same “100% whole grain” claims for New York, Illinois and Florida buyers; this settlement covers them, and their plaintiffs agreed to dismiss. There is no separate claim in either.

The administrator is Kroll Settlement Administration LLC: (833) 421-4690; Wallenstein v. Mondelez International, Inc., c/o Kroll Settlement Administration LLC, P.O. Box 225391, New York, NY 10150-5391; and the contact form on WheatThinsClassSettlement.com. Class counsel is Fox Law, APC (Dave Fox, Joanna Fox, Courtney Vasquez).