Immigrant food stamp scammer sentenced in Gary, Indiana

03/27/2011 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Wouldn’t you think that eventually the word would get around to the food stamp fraudsters that their fellow scammers were being busted from coast to coast. Nevermind, I take that back, only if they happened to read RRW would they know because no one in the old media ever puts these stories together.

Today’s scam comes from the Post-Tribune in Gary, Indiana:

A Gary man will have to pay back almost $290,000 along with serving 21 months in prison after pleading guilty to food stamp fraud, according to court records.

Husein Kanakrieh was sentenced Wednesday in the U.S. District Court after pleading guilty last year to charges of lying on his income tax filings and abusing food stamps.

Kanakrieh ran a store, Jordan Foods, 4272 Georgia St., Gary, and would buy food stamps for less than their real value, according to his plea agreement. He would then redeem the stamps through his store for full value, the agreement said.

This last line is deceptive. He redeemed his stamps from the taxpayer!

For new readers interested in dozens of similar stories (maybe there is a real investigative reporter out there!), type ‘food stamp fraud’ into our search function.

UK: Brutal Somali gang violence revealed in murder trial

03/27/2011 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Thirty gang members attacked one Somali young man and beat him to death in front of passersby. Five years later, some of the perpetrators are being sentenced to long prison terms, some to life in prison.

From the Camden New Journal:

A FOURTH man has begun a life sentence for the “brutal and senseless” public execution of a teenager in Camden Town.

Gang warfare between rival groups of young Somalis led to the “shocking” death of Mahir Osman, an Old Bailey judge said on Friday. Judge Richard Hone, QC, sentenced his “cowardly” killer, Ahmed Farah, to serve a minimum 16 years following his conviction by a jury after a two-week trial for the 2006 murder.

Farah, 24, from Islington, played a leading role in the attack on engineering student Mahir, 18, from Taplow, Adelaide Road, who was known as “Smiley” to his friends.

A mob of more than 30, all heavily armed, ambushed the 18-year-old on the evening of January 28, a Saturday, and killed him within sight of hundreds of stunned passers-by.

One of those serving a lesser sentence is the son of Idi Amin!

Three have been given life sentences and the others various prison terms on lesser charges. One of them, Faisal Wangita, serving five years, is the son of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

Diversity is strength!

Africans from Libya and Tunisia land by the thousands on Italian islands

03/27/2011 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

From AP:

ROME (AP) — Boatloads of illegal African migrants have resumed setting sail from Libya for Italy, authorities said, overwhelming tiny islands and towns in southern Italy already struggling to host thousands fleeing unrest in Tunisia.

Before dawn Sunday, Italian coast guard vessels escorted a boat crowded with 284 Somalis, Eritreans and Ethiopians to shore, the first boat to resume the long-established routes of smugglers’ boats toward Italy from Libya’s long coastline.

They are sleeping on the docks and in the fields.

Since Lampedusa, a tiny island off Sicily, is already straining from sheltering the thousands of Tunisians, who have taken to sleeping on docks and fields after housing space ran out, the boat from Libya was diverted to Linosa, an even tinier island in the Pelagie archipelago south of Sicily.

Authorities said at least two other boats coming from Libya with hundreds of migrants aboard were spotted by fishing boats or coast guard air and sea patrolling the southern Mediterranean Sunday.

What are they doing here, they have freedom now in Tunisia?

Sen. Maurizio Gasparri, a close conservative ally of Premier Silvio Berlusconi, said the migrants should be transported back to Tunisia rather than to the mainland.

“They are clandestine (migrants) who ran away from a country where there is no war — on the contrary, there is now more freedom than before,” the Italian news agency ANSA quoted Gasparri as telling reporters.

Over 600 land within a 24 hour period.

Italian border police said in the 24 hours ending at midnight Sunday some 625 migrants, aboard five separate boats landed on Lampedusa. And hundreds had arrived earlier in the week on the island, which is closer to northern Africa than to mainland Italy.

Amazing how prescient Jean Raspail was over 35 years ago when he wrote The Camp of the Saints.

Malta says no more!

03/27/2011 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Malta’s Prime Minister, Lawrence Gonzi, told the European Union that little Malta has done more than its share of giving refuge to those fleeing Africa.

By the way, haven’t we been told that Egypt is free now and Libya soon will be? So, why are they leaving now?

From the Times of Malta:

Malta has no intention of hosting any of the Eritreans, Somalis and Ethiopians who fled Libya to the borders with Egypt and Tunisia, according to Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi.

“At this stage, I think we are already carrying a much bigger burden than we can handle in terms of refugees and asylum seekers and so we won’t be making any offers,” he said, reacting to the European Commission’s initiative to ask member states to resettle hundreds of the displaced Africans.

“We need the EU to take some of our refugees and not the other way round,” Dr Gonzi said when asked about Malta’s position on the Commission’s initiative.

Good for you, Dr. Gonzi!

And, ho hum, the Jesuits aren’t happy.

For new readers, I’ve been following the situation in Malta with Africans arriving there illegally for several years because I find it troublesome that two US Ambassadors to Malta (one in the Bush Administration and now one in the Obama Administration) have been magically transforming illegal aliens arriving in Malta into legitimate refugees who are then sent to America. The policy turned Malta into a magnet for human smuggling—just get to Malta and get a ticket to the US!

Type ‘Malta’ into our search function and see dozens of posts over the years on the precedent set by these two ambassadors.

Somali smuggling, what did asylum lawyers know and when did they know it?

03/27/2011 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a story, hat tip: Paul, from the Investigative Project on Terrorism about a Somali who will soon be sentenced for illegally smuggling Somalis, who may have terrorist connections, into the US.

From the Investigative Project:

A lucrative and active human smuggling ring brought an undetermined number of potential Somali jihadists into the United States through Brazil, federal prosecutors say in court papers.

Those prosecutors are asking a federal judge in San Antonio to give the maximum sentence to a Somali man who pleaded guilty in November to two counts of making false statements on a 2008 asylum application. Ahmed Muhammed Dhakane failed to report his connections to Al-Ittihad Al-Islami (AIAI) and al-Barakat, both specially designated terrorist organizations.

When he is sentenced April 28, prosecutors want U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez to factor in a series of related and disturbing actions spelled out in this memorandum, including the human smuggling of potential terrorists. They intend to call several law enforcement witnesses and three people Dhakane smuggled into the country.

The smuggling was run through Brazil, aided by bribes paid to immigration authorities there, from June 2006 through March 2008. Dhakane instructed those he smuggled on how to make false asylum claims.

The sentencing memo was first reported by Patrick Poole.

[…..]

Dhakane smuggled in people he knew were violent jihadists “with the full knowledge that if the decision was made by the [terrorist group], for which he was associated with in the past, to commit terrorist acts in the United States, these jihadists would commit violent acts in and against the United States,” they [prosecutors] added.

Read it all, Dhakane may also be charged in a rape case.

Gosh, it was just yesterday we reported that asylum lawyers were putting their heads together on how to flood the system with asylum claims from Mexico, here.

And then, here, back in January, I speculated that some of the Somalis making their way across the world are somehow in contact with asylum lawyers or non-profit agencies awaiting their arrival on the southern border. I wonder did this case involve any advance planning with Mr.Dhakane from this side of the border? That is what I would like to know!