Day: December 18, 2010

Maine: Somali man and woman sentenced in health care fraud case

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is an update of the case we reported back in June.

From the Lewiston Sun Journal:

PORTLAND — A Lewiston man was sentenced to prison Friday for defrauding the government out of health care and other benefits.
His adopted sister was sentenced to home confinement.

At a court hearing Friday, Ahmed Yusuf Guled, 75, was ordered to serve four months in prison and to pay restitution of $119,440 and forfeit property totaling $109,733.

His sister, Dahabo Abdulle Osman, 59, of Portland was sentenced to six months of home confinement and five years of probation for the same offenses.

Senior U.S. District Judge D. Brock Hornby also ordered Osman to pay restitution totaling $102,509 and forfeit property totaling $88,642.02.

Guled and Osman were convicted in U.S. District Court on June 24, 2010, of conspiring to defraud the United States and commit health care fraud offenses, and separate charges of health care fraud.

The jury found that they fraudulently obtained Medicaid funds through MaineCare’s Home and Community Based Care Program, also known as the Waiver Program.

They didn’t just limit their fraud to Medicaid benefits, all sorts of welfare programs were ripped-off.

Guled and Osman were also convicted separately of making false statements to the Social Security Administration in connection with the receipt of Supplemental Security Income benefits, making false statements to housing officials with respect to public housing benefits and to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services in connection with the receipt of MaineCare, food stamps or TANF benefits.

As I said the other day, I am glad the Obama Administration is hot on the trail of welfare fraud cases.

Saudi Arabia deports another 150 Somalis to Mogadishu

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..and not a word out of Amnesty International!

Earlier today I told you that the Canadian government deported a Somali former refugee with a long crime rap sheet back to Somalia and Amnesty International was highly critical.  Now, again,* we see that Muslim Saudi Arabia deported 150 fellow Muslims to Mogadishu and not a peep out of Amnesty International that I’ve seen.

From Press TV:

Over 150 Somali migrants deported from Saudi Arabia have landed at Aden Adde International Airport in Mogadishu.

Most of the expelled people, who arrived in the Somali capital on Friday, were Somali teenagers who tried to escape the war-torn country, a Press TV correspondent reported.

Abdullahi Aden, one of the deportees, told Press TV that Saudi authorities had forcibly sent them back to Somalia.

“We had fled a desperate situation of civil war, political instability, poverty, and famine in Somalia and the Horn of Africa, but unfortunately, we were captured by the Saudi police force in operations they conducted in Jeddah,” Aden said.

He expressed concern over the long, unsafe journey Somalis take to reach Yemen before heading toward Saudi Arabia.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Yemen receives 14,000 refugees annually.

* We’ve written many times about the poor treatment of Muslim refugees by wealthy Saudi Arabia, use our search function to find those posts.

Dream Act dead today in US Senate

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

From Talking Points Memo:

By a vote of 55 to 41, a cloture vote on the DREAM Act failed in the Senate this morning. That brings an end to the push for the legislation — which would provide a pathway to legal status for illegal immigrants who serve in the military or earn college degrees — until the 112th Congress, which will convene Jan. 5.

That Congress will have more Republicans than this one did, which doesn’t bode well for the prospects of the DREAM Act passing in 2011. As expected, Republicans lined up to stop the cloture vote on DREAM, fearful of being singed by a conservative base that has zero tolerance for immigration reform beyond the type favored in the Grand Canyon State.

Ironically — or perhaps predictably in the current Senate environment — DREAM was a bipartisan bill when it was introduced in the Senate in 2007 by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Richard Lugar (R-IN). Now, defeat of the bill has fallen along largely partisan lines as expected.

But there were a few who jumped ship — Republican Sens. Dick Lugar (IN), Lisa Murkowski (AK), and Bob Bennett (UT) voted yes on cloture. Democratic Sens. Mark Pryor (AR), Jon Tester (MT), Ben Nelson (NE), Kay Hagan (NC), and Max Baucus (MT) all voted no. Jim Bunning (R-KY), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Joe Manchin (D-WV) were absent.

Read it all.

Canada: Gang member deported from Canada—to Somalia!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, apparently dropped right in the heart of Mogadishu!

Guess that will teach ’em!

From the Ottawa Citizen:

A 25-year-old street gang member, who came to Ottawa from Somalia at the age of nine, has been deported to that country in an operation praised by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews.

But the father of Omar Ahmed, a former Ridgemont High School student, is furious at the treatment of his son.

Abdi Farah told the Citizen that his son was dropped last week in the lawless Somali capital, Mogadishu, despite assurances he says he was given from Canadian officials that he would be flown to Bosaso, a city in the more stable state of Puntland.

A spokesman for the Canada Border Services Agency would neither confirm nor deny the story.

Omar Ahmed, the ghost

Ahmed has admitted being a member of a notorious Ottawa street gang, the Ledbury Banff Crips. He was known on the street as “Ghost.”

Ahmed has been convicted of a series of crimes, including possession of crack cocaine for the purpose of trafficking, assault, mischief and uttering threats.

According to an Ottawa police report, the LBC gang uses guns and other weapons to aggressively defend its turf for cocaine trafficking.

Readers this is a big deal, normally refugees are not returned to terrorist countries and I saw another story on this case indicating Amnesty International was now involved.  But, I was impressed that Canada must be getting really serious about refugees and other immigrants who commit crimes and the public is probably figuring—good get them off the street and deported.   Why should we pay for their incarceration in Canada, they must be asking.

The “ghost” is scared

“He was in a very critical condition,” Farah said. “They just left him in the airport.”

Farah said he has spoken with his son five times since he returned to Somalia. He’s now living with relatives in Galkayo, an area recently scarred by inter-clan violence.

“He’s OK, he’s a little bit scared,” said Farah.

Canada has more Somali criminals in the pipeline and ready to return to Africa.