Day: September 4, 2013

Syracuse: Palestinian convenience store owner/sons admit guilt in lottery ticket theft case

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

One is sentenced to prison.  Dad gets no jail time.

Judge: ‘Andy’ Ashkar exhibited “rapacious greed.”

This is an update (thanks to a reader) of the Syracuse convenience store case where Palestinian Dad and two sons conspired to steal a lottery ticket worth five million dollars from a man who was drug-impaired at the time.

You might want to revisit our 2012 post for background.  This is part of an on-going hobby of mine to report on crimes at immigrant-run Mom & Pop grocery stores.   I wouldn’t be surprised if this trio was also into the food stamp fraud racket.

Here is the news last week at the Huffington Post:

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — A central New York maintenance worker duped out of a winning $5 million scratch-off ticket will get his money next month, seven years after being scammed out of the jackpot, state lottery officials said Thursday.

The Gaming Commission has verified that the ticket belongs to Robert Miles of Syracuse, officials at the agency said. He’s expected to receive his jackpot within the next couple of weeks.

Read it all.

Punishment for Nayef Ashkar: can’t sell lottery tickets for the rest of his life—wow! that is tough!

Now here is a report about the one brother, Andy Ashkar who was sentenced to prison time in July.

Ten months ago, Andy Ashkar, was receiving congratulatory calls after news spread that he and his brother claimed a $5 million lottery prize. This week, Ashkar is behind bars after a judge sentenced him to 8 to 25 years for having the ticket that was stolen from his parents’ convenience store.

During his sentencing on Tuesday in Syracuse, N.Y., Onondaga County Court Judge Joseph Fahey told Ashkar, 35, “You exhibited some of the most rapacious greed I’ve seen in a long, long time.”

Here is a story about Daddy Ashkar who was convicted of a felony, but received no jail time.

Just for your information, we don’t take too many Palestinian “refugees” so it’s not clear how this family of crooks got here but possibly through one of the State Department’s “investor visa” programs.  Reminder! This is a wide-open field for investigation by a blogger wannabe!

For more on problems in Syracuse, go here, for all of our posts on the joys of diversity in that “welcoming” refugee resettlement city.   Among other things, you will learn more about immigrant “entrepreneurs” scamming the US taxpayer through food stamp fraud.

IRC’s Bob Carey: The Syrians are coming soon because we are going to make it happen

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a short piece at WNYC News.  You might want to listen to Carey’s interview (I didn’t) about the International Rescue Committee’s wish to start bringing in the Syrians.  They always make it sound like it’s the refugees’ idea to ‘seek safety’ in America when it’s really the contractors, like the IRC, looking for new and diverse clients.

Carey: We are working hard every day to bring you more Middle Easterners to add to your city’s cultural diversity. At the moment, we need more Syrians to add to our client collection!

While Syria’s civil war has ravaged the country for more than two years, very few Syrians refugees have sought safety in the United States. The New York-based International Refugee [Rescue] Committee says that may be poised to change, however.

Bob Carey is the International Refugee Committee’s vice president for resettlement and migration policy. He says many refugees were initially reluctant to go far from home because they still held on to hopes that the conflict would be resolved. Now, he said, the government infrastructure for resettlement is working to identify those who most need refuge.

Here is more about Bob Carey, one of those 6-digit employees whose salary you pay!

A commenter sums up what the average American is thinking!

 Malcolm

Great…That’s all we need now is to import the very same people who destroyed their own country. The Arabs have 22 countries of their own to choose from. None of them can accept the refuges? If none can, what does it say about their failing culture?

The International Rescue Committee is one of the nine major federal contractors resettling refugees to your cities and towns.

Endnote:  If anyone has the time to listen to his interview, let us know if he says anything other than the same old verbiage about why it’s our “humanitarian” duty to bring Syrians to the US.

Sheboygan TB outbreak—it’s not about badgers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Huh?

I’ve noticed a trend in reporting about immigrants and refugees—unless they are cute kids or wholesome-looking young adults, avoid the photos.  How many times have I seen immigrant food stamp fraud cases reported and the accompanying photo is the ‘scales of justice’ or just a photo of an EBT card?  I would say about half of the stories I come across involving immigrant criminals use some other illustration than the person’s face!

British badgers taking the blame for TB?

So, when I saw this story about Tuberculosis in the UK  on the rise in one section of London (Redbridge) due to the large immigrant population, illustrating the story with a photo of a badger seems the ultimate diversion in the main stream media’s politically-correct avoidance of the truth.

Here is the story from the Ilford Recorder.

It seems badgers may be responsible for bovine TB, but the important part of the story is this:

A new health group is fighting the spread of tuberculosis (TB) in Redbridge after it was revealed to have one of the worst rates of the disease in London.

The group was set up by Redbridge Council, which is now in charge of public health in the borough, to co-ordinate a three-year programme to raise awareness of the disease in vulnerable residents.

[…..]

More than 56 residents per every 100,000 in the borough had the disease last year, when 157 new cases were recorded.

The average rate for England is just 14 and 42 in London. Most sufferers were born outside of the UK and aged between 25 and 44.

The Greens have jumped in to defend the badgers and a spokeswoman reminds the public that this is human to human TB and doesn’t involve the scapegoated badgers.

“Although Redbridge has one of the worst rates of tuberculosis in London, residents should remember that it is a separate strain of TB, transmitted only between human beings.”

So you think it’s just ‘over there’!

I bet you missed this story from Sheboygan, Wisconsin two months ago.  I did, but reader ‘pungentpeppers’ didn’t.

Tuberculosis Outbreak Shakes Wisconsin City

Looking crisp and official in his khaki-colored sheriff’s department polo shirt, Steve Steinhardt says Sheboygan, Wis., is a pretty good place to be a director of emergency services.

“Nothing bad happens here,” he says, knocking on wood. Unless, that is, you count the tuberculosis outbreak that struck the orderly Midwestern city of 50,000 this spring and summer.

“I never expected TB to be one of the bigger emergencies I’d face when I got into this field,” Steinhardt says.

Sheboygan County officials have had to scramble to contain it. At the height of the crisis, the county activated its emergency operation center — a step usually reserved for major fires, floods and tornadoes.

It began with an immigrant family (apparently refugees).

The Sheboygan outbreak came to light on April 11. The first case was a woman at the center of a large, close-knit family. Health officials decline to identify the family, but they say the people were part of an immigrant community, a common theme in most current TB outbreaks in the U.S.

Sheboygan is home to sizable populations from Mexico and Southeast Asia, where TB is common. Asian immigrants make up half of Wisconsin’s recent TB cases. Refugees among the Hmong people of Laos and Thailand have been among the most difficult to treat cases.

Who will pay for all this?  Obama?

But the really bad news was that the woman at the epidemic’s center had a TB strain resistant to at least two of the main drugs used to treat the infection. That’s known as , or MDR-TB. It’s especially hard to cure. The antibiotics can cost around $300,000 for a single case.

For new readers, see our category on ‘health issues’ (here) and see especially this shocking story from last year about the IOM readying drug-resistant TB cases to come to the US.