Someone else notices! I’ve been writing about food stamp fraud (the big stuff—trafficking) for five years and have noticed a trend, now I see another blogger has noticed. The website is the Libertarian Republican. Here is how the blogger wraps up his post headlined like mine above (which I borrowed from these guys).
Editor’s note – “age and address [ethncitiy and immigration status] unknown, or “unmentioned” by the leftist-biased, diversity-obsessed media.”
Yup! That is pretty much the trend. Sometimes the mainstream media will give the age (they did here), but ethnicity and immigration status almost never. Although a tip-off sometimes happens when the story mentions that money (your money!) was wired to another country.
Here is the news from Pennsylvania that prompted this (one of several) new food stamp fraud busts in my alerts. The alleged fraudsters are Samson Dweh (Liberian maybe?) and Emile Bizimungu (Rwandan?) and they are being busted on wire fraud (hmmmm!) as well as food stamp fraud. This is our second Pennsylvania bust in recent days. Remember Kuldip Kaur pouting in Pottstown, here.
Two Brentwood men who ran separate small grocery stores in the South Hills were indicted Wednesday for wire fraud and food stamp fraud, documents filed today in U.S. District Court show.
Samson Dweh, 30, ran Mariama African Store in Carrick, according to the indictment naming him.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture authorized him to begin accepting food stamps in February 2009.
Starting in August 2010, according to the indictment, Mr. Dweh started paying cash for food stamp benefits, paying around 50 cents on each dollar of benefit the customer sought to cash in.
He would then bill the U.S.D.A. as if the benefits were spent on food, according to the indictment.
Through last year, Mr. Dweh redeemed more than $200,000 in food stamp benefits, “a substantial portion of such benefits having been unlawfully purchased for cash; accepted as payment on credit accounts or loans; and/or accepted as payment for ineligible items,” according to the indictment.
Emile Bizimungu, 31, faces similar accusations as regards the Dollar Grocery Center in Mt. Oliver, according to the indictment against him.
The USDA approved him to accept food stamp cards in Aug. 2011. Starting a month later, according to the indictment, he began trading benefits for cash, and the total reached more than $40,000, according to the charges.
Besides the media never telling us the nationality or ethnicity of the perps, the other huge trend I’ve noticed is that most of this big fraud of the food stamp program is being run out of immigrant-run convenience stores.
To Arizona
We have another case, a big one!, in Arizona yesterday where we aren’t even given the alleged fraudsters names, so will keep an eye on it and they will eventually have to tell us who is ripping off the food stamp program in Phoenix to the tune of $700,000!
From the Arizona Attorney General’s Office:
Phoenix (Wednesday, March 27, 2013) – A multi-agency task force today announced an investigation leading to the identification of four people who work at Dollar Dayz general store located at 1602 West Buckeye Road in Phoenix for Illegally Conducting an Enterprise, Fraudulent Schemes and Artifices, Money Laundering, Unlawful Use of Food Stamps and Computer Tampering.
The investigation comes after months of a coordinated undercover operation involving the United States Department of Agriculture – Office of the Inspector General (USDA OIG), Phoenix Police Department (PD), the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, and the Arizona Department of Economic Security, Office of Special Investigations.
At 12 PM, a Special Assignment Unit of the Phoenix PD made entry into the Dollar Dayz general store, securing it and allowing search warrants to be served so that criminal and civil evidence could be gathered. Examples of evidence include cash, bank records, extraneous food stamp cards, and businessledgers.
In this case, it is alleged that on multiple occasions the store provided cash to individuals in exchange for SNAP (food stamp) benefits in fraudulent transactions during the course of the investigation. Preliminary data from USDA estimates fraud against the SNAP program exceeded $700,000 from this store location alone since 2010.
When searching around through other accounts of the Dollar Dayz bust for the alleged fraudsters names, one report mentioned that the shelves were nearly bare in this store—an early tip-off sign for you if you have a convenience store like this one in your neighborhood. The other day I mentioned at my other blog, here, what some of the signs were of a fraudulent convenience store.
I’ll report back when I find out who was arrested in Arizona.
For more on food stamp fraud cases like these, type ‘food stamp fraud’ into our search function and I’ll bet there are a hundred posts on this type of fraud perpetrated by immigrant-run stores.
About the photo: There is more on the case at AZ Family.com, here.