I’ve long complained that with these immigrant-run food stamp fraud scams, the media rarely mentions the immigration status of the scammer found guilty, but hurrah! this story does!
The store in Connecticut where taxpayers were scammed out of $820,000!
MERIDEN — A local grocery store owner was sentenced to 27 months in prison by a federal judge yesterday for food stamp fraud.
Myrachid Elquafai, 52, of New Haven, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit food stamp fraud and one count of food stamp fraud. He was found guilty after a five day trial in federal court in New Haven.
Deirdre M. Daly, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced that Elquafai was sentenced by Chief U.S. District Judge Janet Hall to 27 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release. [This release bit doesn’t jibe with the deportation suggestion below—ed]
[….]
Elquafai would redeem food stamp benefits at the store at a “significantly discounted rate in exchange for cash and cigarettes,” and an investigation showed more that $820,000 in illegal food stamp benefits were redeemed at the store, Daly said.
[….]
Elquafai has been detained since his arrest on August 2, 2012 and is subject to immigration proceedings after his release from prison, Daly said. Elquafai is a citizen of Morocco, Daly said.
Photo is from this story. Seems store owners were already in trouble for buying stolen goods to stock their shelves.
Click here for our complete archive on immigrant-run convenience store food stamp fraud (a hobby here at RRW). Go here for how to report suspected food stamp fraud.
These are not the same perps we had last week! Here are last week’s Mohammad (AL) and Ahmed (NY)!
That is Mohammed on the left.
Thanks to reader Robin for spotting this story with yet again a slightly different twist on the increasingly common scam. The gas station owners weren’t even eligible to trade in food stamps, they were just buying cards (at a discounted rate) from customers who wanted quick cash.
GROVE CITY — State agents cracked down on a gas station shop owner and his employee, who allegedly cheated taxpayers out of hundreds of dollars in a matter of days.
Taxpayers lost $3 billion*** every year in food stamp fraud, according to an undercover video. Mohammed Aqel and Ahmad Hijazi are accused of contributing to that figure by trafficking food stamp cards in Grove City.
The men were apparently accepting the cards even though their Marathon shop on Broadway is not certified to take the welfare.
Undercover agents with the Ohio Investigative Unit said they posed as customers at this Marathon more than twice in the last few weeks. They said they sold the suspects three EBT cards for more than $100 cash. The benefits on the cards amount to five times that price.
Agents said Aqel and Hijazi spent it all. They suspect they either bought groceries for their own homes or stocked the shelves at the business. The duo faces felony charges and risk losing their liquor license. [What the heck! Gas station owners in Ohio can get liquor licenses?—ed]
For new readers, we follow food stamp fraud cases here at RRW as a side interest. Click here for dozens and dozens of food stamp fraud cases involving immigrant-run Mom & Pop stores.
Go here for information on reporting suspected food stamp fraud in your town.
***Related, see also this December story in the New York Timesconfirming the $3 billion in SNAP fraud the Dept. of Agriculture is uncovering.
As I read this one more story about “xenophobic” attacks in South Africa entitled ‘Six shot amid xenophobic mayhem,‘ I said to myself, ho-hum, nothing new here—the rainbow nation is crumbling (if it ever existed!). Then near the end this line jumped out at me:
“People have been talking a lot lately, saying Mandela is dead so all the Zimbabweans and Mozambicans must leave now. But I think people are people. Everybody belongs,” she said.
So, is she admitting it was all a Leftist myth that black South Africans would “welcome” the stranger and as long as Mandela lived they had to keep up the front? And, although she appears “welcoming” her fellow black South Africans (it is not the white boys robbing the Somali shops) obviously want to keep South Africa for their kind of people. In this case, the Somalis, Zimbabweans and Mozambicans, although the same race, are not their people and they want them to go back to where they came from!
In June Somalis protested xenophobic attacks against them in Cape Town.
Johannesburg – At least six people, including a 6-year-old child, were shot in Munsieville, Krugersdorp, in a New Year’s Eve attack.
A woman who lived near a Somali shop said trouble started at about 4pm when a teenager entered the small shop, known in the area as the “family store”, with a knife and tried to steal some bread.
The shop was rebuilt recently, after being burnt down two months ago in an attack on Somali shopkeepers.
The woman, who did not want to be named because she feared reprisals from neighbours, said she heard shouting and saw a boy running down the road.
The eyewitness said the youth was shot by one of the shopowners and collapsed near a tree on the edge of a road.
“I heard it. I thought it was a cricket (firecracker), but I saw the teenager running and then he fell down. I think he was dead,” she said.
Police arrived after the shooting and made some arrests, leaving the shop open, she said.
Residents, many of them teenage boys, decided it would be a good opportunity to raid the shop. But there was resistance from the Somalis, who defended themselves by shooting at their attackers, witnesses said.
Read onas the mayhem continued. And, the comments go on for pages!
Photo is from this storywe reported over the summer.
EBT Nation! This is my go-to graphic for food stamp fraud stories when I can’t find a photo of the perp.
This may be the best food stamp fraud story we’ve posted all year!
No Mohammads in this one however!
Note to new readers: following immigrant-run convenience store fraud is a hobby here at RRW, and one that has recently yielded lots of juicy stories. Click here for our entire archive.
This one is from Salem, Massachusetts where Haitian immigrant, Peter Jhonny Limat, has been found guilty of ripping off the Department of Agriculture (you the taxpayers) to the tune of an estimated half a million dollars at two convenience stores he owns.
But, what is so interesting is that his defense in court was that the customers made him do it—they were to blame for his stealing from the SNAP program. In fact, the customers are also breaking the law as we saw in the story from Florida earlier this month (Operation Money Tree!), but the judge wasn’t buying that Limat wasn’t at fault.
This is the first story I saw at The Salem News published on December 24th. Below you will get a chuckle out of story number two, published on December 28th (I was looking, unsuccessfully, for a photo of Limat when I found the update). Emphasis below is mine:
SALEM — The owner of two small convenience stores in Salem and Lynn will be sentenced next month to two years in jail by a judge who said yesterday that Peter Jhonny Limat’s breach of the public trust warrants time behind bars.
“The money that pays for food stamps doesn’t come out of thin air,” said Salem Superior Court Judge Howard Whitehead. “It comes out of the pockets of working people, and it goes to people who supposedly cannot afford the necessities of life.”
But many of the customers at Limat’s two stores — Boston Street Market in Salem and J&M Mini Mart in Lynn — weren’t using their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or “SNAP,” cards to buy food, Limat admitted earlier this month.
This is a really simple explanation for readers on how the scam is done:
Instead, prosecutors said, Limat, 38, of Lynn, would let people use the cards like they were using an ATM and then take half the money for himself. A customer who wanted $50, for example, would let Limat charge $100 to the card, which he would report as food sales. Each of them would get $50 in cash. The Department of Agriculture would then reimburse Limat for the full amount, sending the money directly to his bank account.
[…..]
Over the course of a year, Limat conducted some $800,000 in food stamp transactions, prosecutor Phil Mallard told the judge earlier this month. More than half those transactions — a half-million dollars worth — were for purported food sales of more than $100, something Mallard argued was practically impossible given the limited inventory of both stores. [Readers, just a reminder that the other day I mentioned that store inventory is a tip-off to investigators.—ed]
Limat’s tax return indicated he was raking in the dough in previous years.
But Nathan, a privately hired Boston defense attorney, argued that his client and his family are now struggling to get by.
The 2005 BMW that Limat bought needed a new transmission, and every cent Limat earns as a Haitian interpreter now goes to the state Department of Revenue to satisfy a state cigarette tax arrears, Nathan said. [Sounds like he has more problems on top of food stamp fraud—ed]
Blame the customer! His attorney cited the New York Times!
Both Nathan and Limat yesterday placed the blame on customers looking for cash.
“This ‘scam,’ according to a New York Times article, is a fraud committed by the person walking into the store,” Nathan said.
So the judge didn’t buy it and gave Limat a couple of weeks to get his affairs in order before he reports to jail, however, clearly fearing Limat would split the country the judge ordered Limat fitted with a GPS bracelet.
Here is what happened next according to the update from The Salem News:
SALEM — On Monday, a judge gave Peter Jhonny Limat a chance to get his affairs in order before being sentenced in a food stamp fraud scheme.
There was one condition: He had to agree to return to court the next day to be fitted with a GPS bracelet to monitor his whereabouts until sentencing on Jan. 13, when he was scheduled to receive a two-year jail term.
He stood the judge up on Christmas eve!
When Limat, 38, of Lynn, failed to show up at the courthouse Tuesday for his bracelet, Judge Howard Whitehead waited for him all morning, then issued a warrant.
Still, the judge, known for his patience, wanted to give Limat the benefit of the doubt. Even though it was Christmas Eve, the judge remained at the courthouse until it closed at 4:30 p.m., on the chance Limat would show up.
A probation officer who had the day off even went by Limat’s home, where his wife said she hadn’t seen him since the day before.
When Limat finally turned up on Thursday with a list of excuses, the judge ran out of patience and put him in custody.
And yesterday, the judge decided to impose the two-year jail term immediately — even as Limat’s new attorney, Jean-Fresnel Josaphat, offered more excuses for Limat’s failure to show up.
No more excuses, as clearly the judge fears he might make a run for Haiti!
Josaphat pleaded with the judge to let Limat out of jail, saying his family has planned a birthday party for him on Dec. 29, and offering to surrender any documents he might need to leave the country and return to his native Haiti.
Previously, Limat had told the judge he’d lost his passport — an assertion Whitehead also cast doubt on yesterday.
Do you find it as fascinating as I do that crooks and liars, like this guy, are actually able to buy a couple of convenience stores, get permission from the Department of Agriculture to run the SNAP program in them, and go on for years before being caught?
If you suspect food stamp fraud in your neighborhood, click herefor how to report it.
Endnote: Limat’s story probably tops 2013, but this 2011 food stamp fraud story where Fatima tried to run out the back door with a suitcase full of money (and mom in tow), may be my all-time favorite. Although a close second is this story from 2008 where the Arab American Newsnoted that there were an awful lot of Arab names in these food stamp fraud cases! Nah! said a US attorney, just a coincidence!
Mohammad Reza Moradi (Huntsville Police Department)
Reader ‘pungentpeppers’ alerted us to this new twist on the immigrant-run convenience store fraud we discussed here yesterday. (For new readers, this is a side-interest here at RRW).
I wouldn’t be surprised if these perps are also into the food stamp fraud business. In fact, a few times I’ve seen mentioned that if convenience store shelves are not well-stocked it’s a tip-off to authorities that some other nefarious business (including selling drugs or guns) is being transacted there. So, they gotta keep stuff on the shelves!
These guys were arrested for buying stolen property from large grocery chains to resell in their Mom & Pop stores—in Alabama of all places!
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama–Huntsville police arrested five local convenience store employees and charged them with reselling items stolen from Kroger and Publix.
Investigators partnered with Kroger and Publix grocery stores for several months, investigating convenience stores that police say bought merchandise stolen from Kroger and Publix. According to police, this detail, combined with previous operations, resulted in a reduction of retail thefts for the two grocery stores.
The police are still looking for the sixth man—Fatah—alleged to be involved in the fencing ring. We may learn later that they were into more than stolen property.
Of course, as always there is no mention of nationalities or immigration status of those arrested. Is there no real investigative reporter curious enough to uncover how all these American convenience stores are being bought up by a large percentage of Middle Easterners?
For more than you ever wanted to know about food stamp fraud at convenience stores, click here for our extensive archives. Go here to see how you can report suspected SNAP fraud near you.
