Since RRW isn’t really about food stamp fraud (although it’s become a side interest of mine especially as it relates to immigrants as the perps), here are three quick mentions of the latest scams found in my alerts.
For my critics who say I purposefully pick out immigrant fraud cases, I’ve thrown in the rare case of the fraudster being (apparently) an American because it is such a novel (creative!) case of fraud and I wanted you to see it.
First is one of our many ‘Mohammed’ arrests and convictions and an update of the story we postedhere(“big fish” indeed!).
Authorities say the owner of four dollar stores in northern New Jersey has admitted to a scheme in which patrons were allowed to make more than $5 million in fraudulent food stamp transactions.
Essex County prosecutors say 49-year-old Muhammed Farooq of Somerset pleaded guilty Wednesday to theft by deception and agreed to forfeit $832,830.
He faces up to seven years in state prison when he’s sentenced Jan. 6.
So, where did the rest of the $4 plus million go—out of the country?
Now to Waltham, Mass. where another man with Middle Eastern origins has been indicted.
BOSTON (MyFoxBoston.com) – The manager of a Waltham convenience store has been indicted in connection with the fraudulent use of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), known commonly as food stamps.
Attorney General Martha Coakley’s Office announced Wednesday that 30-year-old Hassan Mounajed, of Fall River, had been indicted on charges of procurement fraud, conspiracy to commit procurement fraud, larceny by false pretenses, access device fraud over $100, and conspiracy to commit access device fraud.
An American food stamp fraudster! Readers, honestly about one in ten of the cases I see in my alerts involve people with American names.
A Raleigh tattoo parlor is accused of taking hundreds of dollars in welfare benefits for tattoos, Raleigh Police say.
Warrants show Raleigh police learned in early 2013 that Ink Addiction Tattooz at 2012-B Poole Road was accepting Electronic Benefit Transfer cards as payment for tattoo work.
Court documents show an informant purchased tattoo work from owner Clifford Craig Tittleusing two EBT cards. The informant also sold Tittle two more EBT cards.
Through further investigation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture found four instances of tattoo work being paid for using EBT cards.
Judy told you the other day, here, that the conservatives are now in control of the government in Australia and that immigration policy differences played a huge role in the election outcome.
“Hardliner” Scott Morrison appointed immigration minister in Abbott government. Photo: . AAP/David Crosling
I’m in no position to analyze the myriad issues facing the new government over its “boat people” policy going forward, but here is a legal writer at SBS.com.au , Alex Reilly, laying out the mine fields ahead for the likely new immigration minister, Scott Morrison.
Reilly:
Asylum seeker policy experienced a rush of activity in the lead-up to the election. Behind the Abbott government’s bold promise to “stop the boats” in its first term of government is a series of specific proposals – some adopted from Labor, and some of the Coalition’s own creation.
The new immigration minister, Scott Morrison, inherits a portfolio that is in disarray.There are tens of thousands of asylum seekers already in Australia who have made an application for a Protection Visa, but who have not had their claim considered at first instance by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC). They are in various forms of detention or in the community on bridging visas with no rights to work.
I couldn’t possibly begin to analyze this, other than to say it sure looks “thorny!” Read it all.
You might want to see our previous 110 posts on Australia where the public is in a much greater state of agitation over illegal aliens (mostly from Muslim countries) than Americans seem to be. Or at least the issue is a pivotal election issue there and has not YET reached that level in the US.
A day at the beach in Italy: The bodies of the six drowned Eygptians were laid out on a popular beach in Catania, Sicily’s second city. Photograph: Dario Azzaro/AFP/Getty Images
Reuters has reported that Italian authorities have captured the so-called “mother ship” used recently to ferry Syrians (and North Africans) across the Mediterranean to Europe. Illegal alien crossings (with a loss of life) have increased dramatically since that Obama Administration-applauded “Arab Spring” got underway in Africa. The captured traffickers are Egyptians.
ROME (Reuters) – Italian authorities have seized a “mother ship” used to traffic illegal migrants across the Mediterranean and picked up about 200 Syrians fleeing the civil war in their homeland, officials said on Thursday.
European Union and Italian patrol boats chased down the fishing boat with a crew of 15 that had been used to ferry the immigrants into international waters near the Sicilian coast, prosecutors and police said.
The vessel’s crew had already transfered the refugees into a smaller boat for the final leg of their voyage. Italian police boats collected 199 migrants, including 64 children, all of whom were Syrian.
The fishing boat was towed back to the port of Catania in Sicily. The seizure of the mother ship was a result of an investigation into the drowning of six migrants off Sicily in August, prosecutors said in a statement.
The smugglers are part of an Egyptian crime group, they said. The exact departure point of the fishing boat was still unknown.
The numbers are growing and countries on the Mediterranean are feeling the crunch—most especially Italy and Malta.
Almost 9,000 migrants reached Italy by boat between July 1 and August 10, the Interior Ministry said.
In the 12 months up to August 10, more than 24,000 came, compared with more than 17,000 in the same period a year earlier, and almost 25,000 in the 12 months before that, the ministry said.
One more headache for those trying to figure out how to run Obamacare—-federal law requires foreign language interpreters for government health care.
So how are they possibly going to get the information to the millions of Americans who don’t speak English? And, yikes! how much will it cost?
To add to the chaos, the US State Department’s Refugee Resettlement Program is every day adding to the potpourri of obscure languages they will need to be ready for.
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Set on a gritty corner of Oakland’s International Boulevard, the nonprofit Street Level Health Project offers free checkups to patients who speak a total of 22 languages, from recent Mongolian immigrants seeking a doctor to Burmese refugees in need of a basic dental exam.
It also provides a window into one of the challenges for state officials who are trying to implement the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s sweeping health care overhaul.
Understanding the law is a challenge even for governors, state lawmakers and agency officials, but delivering its message to non-English speakers who can benefit from it is shaping up as a special complication. That is especially true in states with large and diverse immigrant populations.
For Zaya Jaden, a 35-year-old from Mongolia, getting free care for her sister’s persistent migraine was a much higher priority than considering how the expansion of the nation’s social safety net through the Affordable Care Act might benefit her.
The sisters crammed into the clinic’s waiting room, sandwiched between families chatting in the indigenous Guatemalan language Mam, and discussed whether enrolling in Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act would work for the family’s finances.
“It was a good idea that Obama had, but I don’t know if it will work for me,” said Jaden, who gets private insurance for her family through her job as a laundress at an Oakland hotel and currently makes too much money to qualify for Medicaid. “If I make less than what I make to try to qualify for the government program, how could I pay my rent?”
Jaden’s ambivalence demonstrates the cultural and language hurdles that California and several other states are facing as they build exchanges — or health insurance marketplaces —and try to expand coverage to ethnic and hard-to-reach populations.
[…..]
The U.S. Census estimates that more than 55 million people speak a language other than English at home. Nearly 63 percent of those are Spanish-speakers, with the highest concentrations in Texas, California and New Mexico. Chinese was the third most commonly spoken language, with large populations in California, New York, Hawaii and Massachusetts.
Five other languages have at least 1 million speakers: Tagalog,* French, Vietnamese, German and Korean.
Glad it’s not me figuring out how to make this work! And, imagine what it will cost. In one of the first posts I ever wrotehere at RRW (July 2007) I reported that the Montgomery County Court (MD) system was shelling out a $1 million a year on interpreters for immigrant court cases. I wonder if the CBO figured interpreter costs into the taxpayers’ bill for Obamacare?
The story in the Connecticut Jewish Ledger begins:
With a limited English vocabulary, Fitsum Anafu Tsema Molla has few ways of describing events of the first 38 years of his life. Oftentimes, “not good” serves as the perfect catchall.
Today, Fitsum sits in the quiet lobby of a West Hartford synagogue – where he is now a “regular ” – thousands of miles from anything resembling home, and communicates his harrowing life story, one “not good” at a time.
Headlined An Ethiopian refugee living in Hartford struggles to live a Jewish life, the piece recounts a tale of woe. The 38-year-old Fitsum was born just before a Marxist government took over Ethiopia and the Jews were targeted — 2,500 killed and 7,000 made homeless. Fitsum’s father was shot in 1978 and remained paralyzed and in a hospital until he died in 1993.
During the 1980s thousands of Ethiopian Jews were brought to Israel in a covert operation. But Fitsum stayed with his father, as conditions for Jews got worse and worse. In 1997 he snuck into Kenya, where Jews are not liked. He was brutally attacked a number of times and carries scars all over his body from knife wounds.
Finally, Fitsum’s cries were heard and an alphabet soup of acronyms, representing a multi-course meal of refugee organizations, entered his life. The Refugee Consortium of Kenya learned of Fitsum’s plight and on Oct. 9, 2010, referred him to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), a Jewish organization dedicated to rescuing and resettling imperiled refugees. At some point – when exactly is unclear – the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) officially designated Fitsum a refugee according to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and labeled him an assault victim in need of medical service….
With the UN’s blessing in hand, HIAS passed the case on to the U.S. Refugees Admission Program, which interviewed Fitsum in October 2010. Several months later, he was interviewed again, this time by U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, and approved as an immigrant. The State Department placed him with the Hartford branch of Catholic Charities, an organization that provides resettlement services for refugees from around the world.
There’s more to the story, but at this point my head began to spin. Fitsum was referred to HIAS and he ended up in the U.S.? He could have gone to Israel at any time in his life and be given entry as a Jew. Not only that, but his father was Israeli! Father was described as an engineer so he wasn’t an uneducated guy. He must have known his son stayed with him although he could have gone to Israel during the airlift. So why didn’t he say, “Son, when I’m gone, get yourself to Israel”? But since apparently the father didn’t think ahead for his son, why didn’t HIAS get him resettled in Israel?
Instead, Fitsum ended up with Catholic Charities in Hartford, Connecticut, which settled him in an apartment with a Muslim roommate who “objects to his Judaism.” He avoids being at home and sometimes rides a bus all night to avoid the situation. He couldn’t hold the jobs he got and believes he has medical problems that hamper his functioning. With all those beatings, he could be brain damaged, and from the description of him in the article it seems quite possible. If he were in Israel, he would be getting top-notch medical care, but here he is just one more pathetic refugee.
Fortunately, all is not hopeless.
Fitsum and Rabbi Pincus [from the Jewish Ledger, Connecticut edition, 9/11/13]
Fitsum finds respite from strife at Congregation Beth Israel, in West Hartford. When he asked Catholic Charities about access to a synagogue, they contacted Rabbi Michael Pincus, who spread open arms to a new congregant. … Beth Israel has been an almost-literal savior for Fitsum. He attends minyan there Monday through Thursday and visits for weekly Friday night services as well. As he tells it, Beth Israel is the only good thing he has going.
…. word of Fitsum’s plight has spread, and the Jewish community is rallying to action. Soon after meeting Fitsum, Pincus spoke to Bob Fishman, executive director of the Jewish Federation Association of Connecticut (JFACT). Fishman spoke with Gough at Catholic Charities, whom he says was very receptive to his concerns about Fitsum’s circumstances and happy to work with JFACT on solving Fitsum’s issues.
According to Fishman, Catholic Charities, which cannot comment publicly on the specifics of Fitsum’s case, will organize mediation between Fitsum and his roommates. They will also explore options for moving him from his current home and finding him a more suitable job, Fishman says.
Mediation? Are they nuts? What are they going to do, tell the roommate (or roommates; it’s unclear) that Jews aren’t really apes and pigs and they should be nice to Fitsum?
Then, in light of what I’ve said before, this takes the cake:
As Pincus, JFACT and Catholic Charities scurry to make his life more pleasant – or at least more bearable – Fitsum remains motivated by the most ingrained allegiance his father passed down: love for Israel.
“My father’s country is my country,” he says. “If I sacrifice, I sacrifice for Israel. I’m working for Israel.”
Three days before Anafu’s death, he passed on to his son an Israeli flag, and Fitsum has clung to it throughout the ensuing 20 years. Fitsum says Anafu spoke every day about Israel and dreamed every night about Jerusalem. He says, if possible, he would happily relocate one more time. The holy land would be a presumptive ultimate destination in his constant search for a place where his Judaism is accepted and celebrated. Fishman says he and Pincus are already working to make aliyah possible.
Somehow Fitsum kept an Israeli flag, and now talks of going there, but never thought of trying to get to Israel before, either from Ethiopia or from Kenya. Maybe he was too ignorant to know he could have gone there and been accepted, but why didn’t any of the agencies and bureaucrats whose hands he passed through think of that? Perhaps it’s ingrained dislike of Israel. Perhaps … I was trying to think of another reason, but I can’t. Nobody in the refugee business could be unaware that any Jew can settle in Israel. Let’s hope his Jewish helpers can get him to Israel, where he can have some kind of a life.
One more headache for those trying to figure out how to run Obamacare—-federal law requires foreign language interpreters for government health care.