Gary,Indiana massive food stamp fraud arrest, Mohammad coefficient 100%

Update March 23rd:  The Mohammad family indicted, here.

Can you believe it!  There are three Mohammads  in this latest food stamp fraud arrest!  The names sound Somali, but I’m just guessing—the media rarely tells us an immigrant criminal’s ethnicity!   If readers from Indiana learn more, please let us know!

And, get this—they shipped the money out of the country!  Surprise (not!).

I wonder if these businesses got their starts with government-funded micro-loans!  How else are twenty-somethings owning stores.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Two Gary, Ind., food marts let people use their food stamps like a normal debit card, giving them cash back and cigarettes in exchange.

In return, they illegally redeemed those food stamps to the federal government for more than $500,000, according to two federal indictments filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Hammond.

Now Ola Mohammad, 31, and her brother Abdkdar Mohammad, 29, both of Chicago, face one count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and three counts of wire fraud.

Kaled Mohammad, 27, of Cicero, Ill., faces two counts of wire fraud in a separate but similar case. It was unclear Friday if he is related to Ola and Abdkdar Mohammad.

Court records say Ola Mohammad used her store, Moses Foods, at 1330 Broadway, to allow customers to purchase cigarettes and receive money back through their food stamps.

For instance, on Nov. 22, one customer bought a bag of Cheetos, a 2-liter bottle soda and a pack of cigarettes, and received $40 back in cash, all paid for from a food stamps card. The siblings redeemed the food stamps from the federal government for $4,735,850 through the illegal scheme, according to the indictment.

The money was sent to a bank account that both Ola Mohammad and her father could access, then was wired outside the country.

Although Ola Mohammad is the sole owner of the business, her brother assisted her and works there as a cashier. The indictment claims the scheme lasted from February 2010 to June.

Abdkdar was arrested Thursday and ordered held without bond pending a detention hearing and arraignment set for Monday afternoon. Court records did not show if Ola Mohammad has been arrested.

In a separate case, an indictment claims Kaled Mohammad conducted a similar but smaller scheme at his store, Kay Mart, at 4845 Broadway.

As with Moses Mart, Kaled Mohammad allowed customers to use their food stamp card to purchase cigarettes and receive cash back. The indictment claims he redeemed those food stamps from the federal government for about $60,000.

Kaled Mohammad was also arrested Monday and ordered held without bond pending a detention hearing and arraignment set for Monday afternoon.

Gary is only 30 miles from Chicago so these must all be Illinois immigrant spillovers involved.  BTW, Food stamp use among refugees is up sharply, here.

For more on cases like this one, type ‘food stamp fraud’ into our search function and dozens of stories will appear!

Addendum:  I almost forgot, two years ago this month there was another food stamp fraud bust involving another immigrant-run store in Gary (here).  I wondered then why these scammers don’t get the message from busts going on around them.

So, how many refugees did each of the contractors resettle in 2009?

As we reported here, the Office of Refugee Resettlement recently released its Annual Report to Congress for 2009 (four years late!).  To save you from going through its nearly 200 pages, I’m from time to time going to bring you some nuggets.  Already I’ve told you two place we could start cutting the bloated federal budget by cutting grants for “healthy marriages” and forethnic community based organizations” which are essentially little ‘Acorns’—community organizing outfits funded by you.

Wait till I tell you about those special savings accounts for refugees.  Did you know that you are putting your money into their private savings accounts laundered through non-profits?

I hope to have a couple of things for you today, including the savings accounts, here is the first.  If you go to Appendix C of the report, you can learn all about the Big Nine federal contractors who monopolize the program.  There were ten in 2009 as the State of Iowa was being phased out.

Here is the contractor and the number of refugees it brought to your towns and cities in 2009 (remember they are being paid by the head!):

Numero uno!

Church World Service:   6,602 (plus helped 10,806 Cubans and Haitians)

Episcopal Migration Ministries:  4,792

Ethiopian Community Development Council:  3,874

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society:  2,306

International Rescue Committee:  11,547

Iowa Dept. of Human Services:  426

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service:  10,129

US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants:  7,166

US Conference of Catholic Bishops:  22,417  (11,064 Cubans and Haitians)***

World Relief (National Association of Evangelicals):  7,264

For more on these mostly “religious” non-profits read a report at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) which I missed in March of last year, here.   Looks like in my survey of 2009, the Catholics are number 1 followed by the secular IRC, and with the Lutherans coming in at number 3.    (Although that depends on whether you count Church World Service’s Cubans and Haitians).

Says the always diplomatic CIS:

It is to the United States’ credit that our nation has, from her founding, provided a safe haven for the unjustly persecuted. However, even well-meaning efforts require accountability and should be balanced against other important, competing priorities. Without appropriate balance and oversight, helping refugees shifts from being a worthy humanitarian gesture in truly exceptional cases to an avenue for government largesse, enriching private bureaucracies while feeding public cynicism.

Readers, there is no oversight of the refugee resettlement program.

***Endnote:  The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is pouring $millions into their political immigration platform, as we learned a few days ago at the Washington Post. Are they using taxpayer money?  Remember they are paid by the head for all those refugees they are resettling.

Rep. Keith Ellison still working to keep the river of US money flowing to Somalia

This is an update about the activities of US Rep. Keith Ellison of Minneapolis, thanks to a reader.

In February, Ellison, the go-to guy for the refugee resettlement industry in Congress, traveled to Mogadishu in order to facilitate keeping the remittance pipeline open from Minnesota to Somalia.   As we reported here in January, up to $120 million a month is sent from Minnesota alone to Somalia!

Ellison has been leading the charge to get the federal government to back off of its prohibition on those little mom & pop money transfer businesses sending money to a country that many knew had al-Shabaab terrorists at the other end of the pipeline.

From Minnesota Public Radio last month:

Ellison with new Somali prez Hassan Sheikh Mohamud

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison visited Somalia’s capital on Tuesday, the first visit in years by a member of Congress to what until recently was considered one of the world’s most dangerous cities.

Ellison, D-Minn., said his visit to Mogadishu fulfills a request from his constituents* with ties to Somalia. Minnesota has one of the largest populations of Somali-Americans in the U.S.

[….]

“I told my constituency I would come here and work for the United States and Somalia relationship, and I am doing that in today’s visit,” Ellison told a news conference in Mogadishu.

[….]

Ellison said his meetings with Somali officials would focus on financial remittances most often sent by Somalis in the U.S. back to family members in Somalia. Such remittances have become harder to make over fears that people sending money could be accused of aiding a terrorist organization such as al-Shabab.

Why don’t lazy reporters put in stories like this one that it’s not just a “fear” that money might end up in the wrong hands, but we have had recent CONVICTIONS of Somalis sending money to al-Shabaab.  There are those two (go to hell infidels) women in Minnesota here and then the San Diego Somalis here.  It is not a “fear” that it might happen.  It has happened.

Besides, why should we be allowing immigrants of all sorts to be sending the US treasury to prop-up the third world—that is exactly what we are doing even if there aren’t potential terrorists at the receiving end.  See El Salvador, here.

*For new readers who might be wondering how Ellison got all those Somali constituents, thank the US State Department and its nine major federal refugee resettlement contractors.  More Somalis on the way!

We have resettled more than 100,000 Somali refugees to cities large and small in the US over the last 25 years.  See one of the most widely read posts here at RRW.  Large numbers went to Minneapolis, and now they are spreading out throughout the state.  In three years since 9/11 ( Bush years 2004, 2005, 2006) the number of Somalis arriving topped 10,000 per year.  Those refugees then began bringing in the family (chain migration!) until 2008 when shock of shocks! the State Department discovered that as many as 30,000 Somalis had lied about their kinship and weren’t related at all.  The State Department then closed the “family reunification” program for Somalis.  It has recently been re-opened for new and legit family members, but they have no intention of finding and deporting the liars.

In the first 4 months of this fiscal year (Oct. 1 to January 31) we have resettled 2,260 new Somalis which means we are on target to make 2013 a banner year for Somalis entering the US.   Never mind that Somalia’s new President is urging Somalis to “come home.”

For more information on Rep. Keith Ellison, click here, for our whole archive.