Lately I’ve passed up a bunch of food stamp fraud stories because they were mostly the same-old story. There was one I should have posted though and didn’t where the immigrant fraudster not only trafficked in food stamps in his convenience store, but also ran an illegal gambling parlor in the back room.
These food stamp fraudsters in Schenectady, Vishnunarine Singh and Elvin Singh, were charged in your basic scam involving exchanging food stamps for cash at 50 cents on the dollar. However, here is the big difference with this story—to send a message, the prosecutor is going after the sellers of their stamps (the customers who got the cash)! So, resettlement contractors need to alert their refugee clients that selling food stamp privileges is illegal!
70% if refugees (95% of Iraqis!) in the US are on food stamps as of the latest complete report we have from the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
From the Daily Gazette:
SCHENECTADY — The investigation into the city business that authorities say regularly defrauded the food stamp system continued Thursday, with the prosecutor saying the total number of recipients who illegally exchanged their benefits for cash could reach into the hundreds.
Nearly two dozen have already been arrested for the alleged actions at Cheese Bakery and Grocery, 1007 State St., including the store owner and his son. More arrests are possible, officials have said. Those not charged criminally could face loss of their benefit privileges.
Prosecutor Katie McCutcheon provided more information on the investigation Thursday, after store owner Vishnunarine Singh, 57, of Ozone Park, and his son Elvin, 27, of Schenectady, were arraigned on multiple felony counts. Both pleaded not guilty.
The two are accused of essentially trading food stamp benefits for cash, with little or no actual food included in the transactions. The recipient would then get typically about 50 percent of the face value of the benefits and the store would keep the other half, officials said.
Such scams have been perpetrated before by store owners.
Three store owners and one store operator were arrested in 2011 in Albany, accused of running the same type of scam. Together, they were believed to be responsible for more than $6.1 million in suspicious food stamp activity.
In the Schenectady case, the arrests of the store owner and son on food stamp fraud charges were accompanied by the arrests of 21 others, accused of using their own food stamp privileges at the store illegally.
“We do want to send a message to the community, store vendors as well as recipients, that this type of fraudulent activity is not going to be tolerated in this community,” McCutcheon said.
Then reporters Steven Cook and Kathleen Moore did a bit of extra research and reported this (below). So where is the mainstream media? Where is the Washington Post, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal on the story of an epidemic in convenience store food stamp trafficking? Based on my 5-plus years of following the scams as a side interest here at RRW, I will bet a bundle that the largest majority of busted stores are owned and operated by immigrants. Is no one curious how they were able to finance and set-up these scams in the first place?
Nationwide in fiscal year 2012, nearly 1,400 stores were permanently disqualified for trafficking and nearly 700 stores were sanctioned for other violations, according to the USDA. Those efforts were the result of reviews of more than 1,500 stores and nearly 4,500 undercover investigations.
For our complete archive on Food Stamp Fraud cases, click here.