Guys with non-American sounding names busted for food stamp fraud

03/29/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Someone else notices! I’ve been writing about food stamp fraud (the big stuff—trafficking) for five years and have noticed a trend, now I see another blogger has noticed. The website is the Libertarian Republican. Here is how the blogger wraps up his post headlined like mine above (which I borrowed from these guys).

Editor’s note – “age and address [ethncitiy and immigration status] unknown, or “unmentioned” by the leftist-biased, diversity-obsessed media.”

Yup! That is pretty much the trend. Sometimes the mainstream media will give the age (they did here), but ethnicity and immigration status almost never. Although a tip-off sometimes happens when the story mentions that money (your money!) was wired to another country.

Here is the news from Pennsylvania that prompted this (one of several) new food stamp fraud busts in my alerts. The alleged fraudsters are Samson Dweh (Liberian maybe?) and Emile Bizimungu (Rwandan?) and they are being busted on wire fraud (hmmmm!) as well as food stamp fraud. This is our second Pennsylvania bust in recent days. Remember Kuldip Kaur pouting in Pottstown, here.

Two Brentwood men who ran separate small grocery stores in the South Hills were indicted Wednesday for wire fraud and food stamp fraud, documents filed today in U.S. District Court show.

Samson Dweh, 30, ran Mariama African Store in Carrick, according to the indictment naming him.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture authorized him to begin accepting food stamps in February 2009.

Starting in August 2010, according to the indictment, Mr. Dweh started paying cash for food stamp benefits, paying around 50 cents on each dollar of benefit the customer sought to cash in.

He would then bill the U.S.D.A. as if the benefits were spent on food, according to the indictment.

Through last year, Mr. Dweh redeemed more than $200,000 in food stamp benefits, “a substantial portion of such benefits having been unlawfully purchased for cash; accepted as payment on credit accounts or loans; and/or accepted as payment for ineligible items,” according to the indictment.

Emile Bizimungu, 31, faces similar accusations as regards the Dollar Grocery Center in Mt. Oliver, according to the indictment against him.

The USDA approved him to accept food stamp cards in Aug. 2011. Starting a month later, according to the indictment, he began trading benefits for cash, and the total reached more than $40,000, according to the charges.

Besides the media never telling us the nationality or ethnicity of the perps, the other huge trend I’ve noticed is that most of this big fraud of the food stamp program is being run out of immigrant-run convenience stores.

To Arizona

Dollar Dayz in Phoenix, AZ busted this week. $700,000 in fraud alleged. Photo: 3TV

We have another case, a big one!, in Arizona yesterday where we aren’t even given the alleged fraudsters names, so will keep an eye on it and they will eventually have to tell us who is ripping off the food stamp program in Phoenix to the tune of $700,000!

From the Arizona Attorney General’s Office:

Phoenix (Wednesday, March 27, 2013) – A multi-agency task force today announced an investigation leading to the identification of four people who work at Dollar Dayz general store located at 1602 West Buckeye Road in Phoenix for Illegally Conducting an Enterprise, Fraudulent Schemes and Artifices, Money Laundering, Unlawful Use of Food Stamps and Computer Tampering.

The investigation comes after months of a coordinated undercover operation involving the United States Department of Agriculture – Office of the Inspector General (USDA OIG), Phoenix Police Department (PD), the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, and the Arizona Department of Economic Security, Office of Special Investigations.

At 12 PM, a Special Assignment Unit of the Phoenix PD made entry into the Dollar Dayz general store, securing it and allowing search warrants to be served so that criminal and civil evidence could be gathered. Examples of evidence include cash, bank records, extraneous food stamp cards, and businessledgers.

In this case, it is alleged that on multiple occasions the store provided cash to individuals in exchange for SNAP (food stamp) benefits in fraudulent transactions during the course of the investigation. Preliminary data from USDA estimates fraud against the SNAP program exceeded $700,000 from this store location alone since 2010.

When searching around through other accounts of the Dollar Dayz bust for the alleged fraudsters names, one report mentioned that the shelves were nearly bare in this store—an early tip-off sign for you if you have a convenience store like this one in your neighborhood. The other day I mentioned at my other blog, here, what some of the signs were of a fraudulent convenience store.

I’ll report back when I find out who was arrested in Arizona.

For more on food stamp fraud cases like these, type ‘food stamp fraud’ into our search function and I’ll bet there are a hundred posts on this type of fraud perpetrated by immigrant-run stores.

About the photo: There is more on the case at AZ Family.com, here.

Arab Spring agitators told to get with the green agenda

03/12/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The climate refugees are coming! There needs to be a Green Arab Agenda!

I thought this little blog post at New Generation Consulting was very instructive. Seems the fomenters of unrest in the Middle East/North Africa went to Europe for some training by the Lefties and got lectured about how they better get on the global warming bandwagon (or at least that’s how I read this post):

I remember witnessing a surreal scene during an international Forum in Northern Europe, in 2011. A group of young Arab pro-democracy actors, heroes of the day, had been gathered for lunch break to meet with one of the Forum leaders. They were duly reminded of the importance of protecting the environment and asked to start promoting ASAP a “green agenda” for their countries. The Arab heroes, slightly taken by surprise, promised politely to do so.

How can you be so disconnected from the realities and preoccupations of the Arab peoples and be so right at the same time?

The latest World Bank report on Adaptation to a changing climate in the Arab countries reminds us that war and peace are not the only matters of life or death in our region.

Assuming that few people in the Arab world would read this fascinating 441 page report, we have decided to select a few striking data about national impact of climate change (CC) at the environmental, social, economic and political levels (table below). This post is but a humble attempt at raising awareness about Climate Change and environmental degradation in the Arab countries. At the end of the day, the real missing link for political accountability and a “green Arab agenda” are informed citizens demanding serious change.

Check it out.

Why have I posted this? Because it’s interesting to me on several levels—first, that the international Left is trying so hard to shoehorn its way into the Islamic supremacist crowd I think not fully understanding that in the long term the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood has nothing to do with the Leftist/Marxist agenda. But, the Arab agitators know that they have to, for the time-being anyway, work with the Lefties and thus, in this case “politely” agree with their collaborators, in the manufacture of chaos, that they are worried about global warming too!

And, the other reason I’m interested is that the drumbeat about “climate refugees” continues, and I want to keep our climate refugees category up to date after having let it languish for some time.

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

03/08/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

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.

CAIR Minnesota busy these days as Muslim population grows

03/06/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A reader sent me this short AP story about how CAIR Minnesota has objected to a sensitivity training course for those having to deal with the burgeoning Somali population around St. Cloud, MN. Waite Park is a town near St. Cloud.

Before I get to the story here is our archive on St. Cloud (26 posts!) where a lot has happened since Somalis began ‘finding their way’ to the area for meatpacking jobs. (The ‘finding their way’ phrase is a joke, they find their way there with the help of refugee resettlement contractors). In 2010 St. Cloud became a primary resettlement site (previously it was a secondary migration site only). The resettlement contractor you paid to get all the newbies settled was Lutheran Social Service. The Lutherans are one of the nine federal refugee contractors. Headquartered in Baltimore, according to their most recent Form 990 , they had $31 million in revenue and you—taxpayers—paid them $30 million of that! And, I bet you thought they were passing the plate in church!

Muslim-packing Rep. Michele Bachmann’s District

The news about CAIR objecting to a training program about al-Shabaab—the Islamic terror group in Africa that recruited over 20 Somali refugees from Minnesota in 2008 to return to Africa for Jihad training—would indicate that Catholic Charities, another contractor, is also in on the ‘Muslim-packing’ going on in Rep. Michele Bachmann’s District.

I’ve just coined a new phrase—what do you think? ‘Muslim-packing!’ to indicate a location where a concerted effort is being made by the US State Department to change the demographics of your town. Professor Kotkin are you listening? They are turning red Congressional districts blue!

Here is the story:

WAITE PARK, Minn. (AP) — A Muslim rights group is calling on police in Waite Park to reject a training program about Somalis.

The program “Understanding the People of Somalia” will be held Tuesday. According to the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the event flier lists Somalia’s al-Shabaab as an “Islamic” organization.

The U.S. Department of State designated al-Shabaab a terrorist group in 2008. CAIR-MN spokeswoman Lori Saroya says the training flier unfairly suggests the activities of al-Shabaab, which is affiliated with al-Qaeda, are supported by most Muslims.

[Ms. Saroya conveniently doesn’t mention the two Minnesota Somali women convicted of sending money to al-Shabaab and telling the court “go to hell infidels”—here—ed]

Waite Park Police Chief Dave Bentrud tells the St. Cloud Times he doesn’t expect any Waite Park police officers will attend Tuesday’s training. [Of course not—CAIR has the police trained—ed] He says the city is hosting the event for Catholic Charities workers and other social-service groups.

CAIR goes after Minnesota church hosting Walid Shoebat!

There is more! CAIR-MN threw a fit also yesterday when a church group in Perham, MN (a little over a hundred miles north from Waite Park) hosted a former Muslim— speaker and author Walid Shoebat—calling him “Islamophobic”. This from CAIR-Minnesota’s release yesterday. Apparently two Muslim students were asked to leave the meeting when they became disruptive. Get this! CNBC published CAIR’s press release verbatim!

(MINNEAPOLIS, MN, 3/5/13) — The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN) today called for a meeting with church officials in Perham, Minn., after two Muslim exchange students were kicked out of an event for questioning the anti-Islam bigotry of the speaker, Walid Shoebat. Shoebat is a notorious Islamophobe who claims “Islam is the devil.”

CAIR-MN is also offering to provide the Assembly of God church leaders with accurate and balanced information about Islam and Muslims and to arrange for a presentation on the faith to church members.

For new readers:

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.

Minneapolis Rep. Keith Ellison is all too happy to oblige and get more money for refugee contractors to bring in more Muslim voters.

***Update***

A reader, Margaret, tells us this!

I live in this area and am so glad to see some light on this. The St Cloud Times will not comment on any negativity on the problem and has a rabid hatred for Michele Bachmann. I know women working in the county courthouse who have quit their jobs because they cannot take the disrespect and total unfairness going on with getting these “immigrants” housing.

And, one more reminder from me! Learn about al-Hijra—the Islamic Doctrine of Immigration.

Asylum seeker from Nepal gets across US border with drug-resistant TB

03/01/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Terrorists can come across the Southern Border and hardly anyone bats an eyelash, but will people pay some attention to the OTMs (Other than Mexicans) also coming across infected with deadly transmittable (and untreatable!) diseases?

The rate of active TB cases in the US is rising with the refugee/asylum seeker population. I first heard of the TB problem with refugees when Allen County (Ft. Wayne) Indiana was having a problem with all the cases among the Burmese. Here is one post I wrote in 2009 about active TB rates rising in Minnesota, and here is my post on a shocking video only watched by a few hundred people about refugees with active TB being readied to come to the US.

But, it’s cases like this Nepalese asylum seeker getting across the border into Texas (after traveling the whole globe) with the worst possible case of drug-resistant TB that gets the media’s attention. Imagine health officials trying to track all those he came in contact with!

The Wall Street Journal thanks to Drudge (emphasis mine):

Drug resistant TB clinic in the Philippines. Photo: Leah Mae Damazo/IRIN

In medical isolation in South Texas, 100 miles or so from Mexico’s border, is a man who embodies one of U.S. health officials’ greatest worries: He is the first person to cross and be held in detention while infected with one of the most severe types of drug-resistant tuberculosis known today.

His three-month odyssey through 13 countries—from his homeland of Nepal through South Asia, Brazil, Mexico, and finally into Texas—shows the way in which dangerous new strains of the disease can migrate across the world unchecked.

Tuberculosis, an ancient, fatal airborne disease, has been treatable for decades with a cocktail of drugs. However, shoddy medical practices world-wide have enabled the bacteria to mutate and, in some cases, become all but untreatable. In recent months The Wall Street Journal has exposed widening TB drug resistance in hot spots like India, and shown that the U.S. is surprisingly unprepared for the growing global problem. Most U.S. cases of drug-resistant TB occur in people who were born abroad, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Nepalese man detained at the U.S. border carries a particularly deadly strain—XDR, “extensively drug-resistant” TB. His TB is resistant to at least eight of the 15 or so standard drugs, according to a U.S. government description of the case reviewed by the Journal. His XDR strain has been seen only once before in the U.S., in another patient of Nepalese origin, according to the government description.

The Nepalese patient was taken into custody by the U.S. Border Patrol in late November as he tried to cross the border illegally near McAllen, Texas, according to Department of Homeland Security officials. The government declined to name him.

He was transferred five days later to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Los Fresnos, Texas, and put into “medical isolation” with suspected tuberculosis, according to ICE. He has since been moved to another ICE detention facility, in Pearsall, Texas, with more medical staff, ICE said. He is the first XDR-case in ICE custody.

[…..]

It remains unclear whether other people in custody with the Nepalese detainee might have been infected. By the time the Border Patrol learned of his infection, other people detained with him would have been transferred elsewhere, the CBP official said.

There is more, read it all!

WSJ reporter Betsy McCay has other articles on the topic. At one point a month or so ago I thought the WSJ had a really great map of TB hotspots around the world. I recall South Africa was one of the hottest countries for the disease. But, I couldn’t find it just now so maybe it was at another publication.

For more information on TB, HIV, mental illness and other health problems related to refugees and immigrants generally, see our health issues category, here, where we have 144 previous posts archived.