We are not talking about the petty stuff—you know like buying some disallowed food or drink item or hiding some of one’s income in order to be eligible.  This is about massive hundreds of thousands of dollars of fraud through the food stamp program and your tax dollars being sent to Africa and elsewhere.

As a matter of fact, I’m wondering if the raid on a halal meat store in Lewiston, Maine last week involved food stamps and money transfers to Somalia.

Also, see the mention in the post I wrote about Muslims attacking Rep. Sue Myrick for her statements warning of Muslim convenience store owners laundering money.  Myrick was right and should have had the facts at her fingertips, like the facts in the following AP story.

From the Oakland Press:

Fraud in the government program that helps the poor has added up to nearly $100 million since 2007, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. It’s a fraction of the more than $40 billion spent to feed people each year, but the crime has become a brazen way for some small stores to literally swipe cash from the U.S. Treasury, especially in the Detroit area.

There have been at least 122 fraud-related convictions of owners or employees in the five-state Midwest region since 2007, nearly double the number from 2004-06, says USDA, which oversees the welfare program. About half of those have occurred in southeastern Michigan.

Among the latest cases: A store west of downtown Detroit is accused of selling bags of the exotic chewy drug khat in exchange for food-stamp benefits. Agents in another investigation discovered that cash was wired to Somalia and other countries.

The boldest scam works like this: People hungry for cash ask the store to ring up a small food sale or a phony one. An employee agrees to hand over money, maybe $50, but takes a larger amount off the card for a nice profit, sometimes as high as 100 percent.

Taxpayers get stung when money is transferred to a store’s bank account from the U.S. Treasury.

[…]

More than 100 stores in Michigan have been kicked out of the program since fall 2007. Nationally, 1,437 were disqualified during the government’s 2009 fiscal year, said Alan Shannon, a Midwest spokesman for USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service.

[…]

North American Money Transfer Inc. recently agreed to pay $25,000 and open its books to investigators in a deal to dismiss an indictment that was tied to how it handled money that flowed through an Ypsilanti store, Abbas Phone Card and Grocery.

The government says food-stamp recipients instructed the store to take money off their cards and get it wired to Somalia and other destinations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The grocery would charge a 25 percent fee.

We’ve covered many many food stamp scam cases here at RRW, a favorite subject of mine ever since the Pakistani scammer in our county got sent away for a few years.  Use our search function for ‘food stamp fraud’ to learn more. 

But, definitely take a minute and visit this 2008 post I wrote about how the Michigan Attorney Generals Office is so steeped in political correctness they claim they didn’t notice that all the scammers they were prosecuting had similar ethnic names until it was pointed out to them by an Arab publication.  Visit that post and have a chuckle—you know it’s kind of like white biker gangs!

My first thought when I saw yet another federal raid (here is one last June) of a Somali business in Lewiston, ME is that I can’t wait for the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence to bring their everything-is-wonderful-in-Lewiston dog and pony show to Frederick, MD!  

For readers not familiar with that story, go here, where we learned that the ‘Hate Violence’ gang from Portland, ME got a federal grant to come and lecture citizens of Frederick, MD  (Manchester, NH, Boise, ID and Ft. Wayne, IN too) about how Lewiston was a showcase for immigrant assimilation!

Here then is the latest sensational story in the Sun Journal from ‘little Mogadishu’ Lewiston.  You will see it isn’t clear why agents raided the store, but it’s likely related to money transfer to Africa (to terrorists?).

LEWISTON — Federal agents raided a local grocer Friday, apparently serving the owner with a search warrant.

Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement converged on the Bartlett Street store and stayed for about four hours, arriving shortly before 10 a.m. and leaving shortly before 2 p.m.

Agents packed up about eight boxes of evidence from A & R Halal Market and hauled them out to the back seat of an unmarked car, a black Chevrolet Impala with Massachusetts license plates.

An agent whose windbreaker identified him as a member of the Criminal Investigation Division of the U.S. Department of the Treasury said he had driven to Lewiston on Thursday night and stayed overnight at a local hotel.

An unidentified federal agent carried a computer hard drive and printer to his unmarked Impala police car, also with Massachusetts plates, and drove away.

[….]

A woman who said she was planning to open an Ethiopian restaurant next door said the apparent owner of the market, identified by acquaintances as Ali Hassan Haji, had owned the business for about eight years. Calls to Haji’s phone were not returned.

Haji arrived at the store late morning and met with agents there before leaving for a local mosque. He returned to the store later in the day. The vehicle he drove, a black Nissan Xterra, was registered to Roda Abdi of Lewiston.

Abdi was referenced in Sun Journal stories as the owner of the market in 2003.

One of the many interesting comments was this one from Jo—a question I’ve been wondering about too!

I find it odd there are so many African stores, one right after the other, up and down Lisbon St, and other parts of the city. They all appear to sell the same things, as evidenced by the displays of cloth blocking the windows. How do they remain viable with so many of the same type of stores? Especially when WalMart appears to be the shopping place of choice. They all advertise the ability to wire money, though. It doesn’t make sense…at all.

Raids occured in Muslim wire transfer stores in Portland, home of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence gang, yesterday as well.

 To citizens of Maine:  If I lived in Maine I would be hounding Senator Susan Collins about all these money transfer businesses sending money to Africa. She sits on the Senate Homeland Security Committee and she should be concerned about this practice.

While you are at it, ask her how this Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence can get a federal grant to lecture other cities in the US about their immigrant populations using untruths about Lewiston as an example for other cities.

One more thing!  Ask her if IDA’s (federal grants/microloans for refugees) are being used to open these storefront Somali money transfer stores in Maine.  And, LOL!, tell her to thank Obama for the stepped up raids.  I think we are seeing more under the Obama Administration then we did under Bush!