They are charged with collecting $340,000 in illegal profits from the US taxpayer.
D & D’s Grocery in Hudson, NY. If you notice immigrants getting rich with a store like this one, suspect food stamp fraud!
Here is the first story I saw in the Albany Times-Union:
HUDSON — Four grocery store employees face federal charges for collecting more than $300,000 in profits from a food stamp scheme.
Federal and county officials said the employees of the D&D’s Grocery & Deliwere indicted Monday on charges they allegedly purchased Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) coupons from customers and resold or used them at a profit, according to a release from Federal Judge Randolph F. Treece and U.S. Attorney Richard S. Hartunian.
Charged with fraud and conspiracy were Mofaddal M. Murshed, 36; Ahmed A. Algahaim, 54; Faisal Q. Morshed, 34; and Ibrahim Q. Murshed, 24.They were arraigned on the charges Monday. Their jail or bail status was not immediately available.
The defendants allegedly collected $340,000 in illegal profits, officials said.
After I began posting, I found this more detailed story in the Register-Star (including the photo of their convenience store). Seems that Mofaddal is the owner and the three others of unknown nationality and unknown immigration status are the employees.
For new readers, food stamp fraud is a side-interest here at RRW until some enterprising blogger wannabe comes along to begin blogging exclusively on immigrant-run convenience store rip-offs of the US taxpayer—it could be a full time job!
Click here for our archive of previous food stamp fraud cases spanning six years! Go here for information on how to report suspected food stamp fraud in your town.
Sudanese refugee Deng Mirac attempted to kill his wife with a kitchen knife, and remains behind bars until trial. Photo Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal
Here is another gift to Maine, most likely thanks to Catholic Charities which is still, I believe, the top resettlement contractor in that state (they say on their website that they are the only federal contractor in Maine).
AUBURN — A judge sided with prosecutors Thursday in an attempted murder case, saying DNA evidence collected from the defendant shortly after his arrest was legal even though police hadn’t executed a search warrant.
Sudanese refugee Deng Mirac, 42, of 158 Blake St. in Lewiston was in Androscoggin County Superior Court for a hearing on his motion to suppress evidence. He was assisted by an interpreter.
He is accused of stabbing his estranged wife, Adut Adong, 34, in the face and abdomen with a kitchen knife in the driveway of her Blake Street apartment in Lewiston in April.
Mirac’s attorney, Nicholas Worden, argued that police should have secured a search warrant before collecting samples of a reddish-brown substance that appeared to be blood on Mirac’s hands and the black leather jacket he was wearing. He said there was no risk of his client destroying or hiding evidence because he was in police custody in an interview room at the police station in Lewiston with his hands cuffed behind his back.
Worden said those circumstances gave police enough time to seek a warrant before taking swabs of DNA from Mirac’s hands and jacket. His Fourth Amendment rights were violated, Worden said.
Justice MaryGay Kennedy disagreed with Worden and denied his motion.
For our many many posts on “welcoming” Lewiston, click here. One of our most popular posts of all time is this 2009 post about Catholic Charities and Maine as the welfare magnet.
On the road to Beersheva before the violence broke out.
Israel built a new detention center for mostly African migrants who are claiming they are legitimate asylum seekers (as opposed to economic migrants looking for work). The facility (we told you about it here) is open for the inhabitants to leave during the day, but they must return at night. It doesn’t look like it’s working out for hundreds who got into violent clashes with police and now are imprisoned 24-7.
More than 100 African migrants/refugees left the newly instated open detention center in S.Israel and begun making their way to Beersheva in protest of the jailing of fellow refugees as well as governmental reluctance to respond to their asylum request.
The 130-strong march left the Holot detention facility for Beersheba Thursday, accompanied by police cars. The march eventually deteriorated and violent clashes with the police, as well as more then a dozen arrests, were reported.
According to the refugees, the protest was intended to demand the release of two of their compatriots who were arrested in a Jerusalem protest some two days ago. They further called from their asylum requests be reviewed individually.
Abdul, a Sudanese refugee, said “we are marching for our friends, for our freedom and for our rights. We request that the Israeli government examine our request individually, and treat us as refugees, not criminals.”
The two men whose arrest sparked Thursday’s demonstration are currently being held in the Saharonim Prison, a jail built to house asylum seekers held under directives which the High Court deemed unconstitutional.
The demonstration’s starting point – the Holot detention facility – was established as a response to the ruling and thus was built as an ‘open jail,’ from which asylum seekers can come and go during day time.
The demonstrators involved in clashes have now been sent to the real prison.
The cost of the Holot facility was roughly a million shekel and in light of the court’s ruling and recent events, it seems the State is adamant in its intent to deport African refugees who find themselves on the wrong side of the law.
Photo is from this account of events at Jews for Justice.
And, the convenience store owners in the $2.8 million rip-off of US taxpayers appear to be another pair of Middle Easterners.
The difference with this case is that in addition to the store owners/employees arrested, 60 people who SOLD their benefits have warrants out for their arrest in the public-assistance fraud probe called Operation Money Tree. Arresting the sellers is rarely done, but in fact I believe it could be the greatest deterrent to the scam on-going in thousands of immigrant-run small grocery stores across America.
Editor’s note: We cover food stamp fraud here at RRW as a side interest, but you should know that the majority of refugees in the US are on food stamps (and are hopefully using the welfare benefit for FOOD).
A tip from an angry grandmother triggered a two-year food stamp fraud investigation by local and federal authorities that Monday saw warrants issued for 60 people who authorities say cheated the system of $2.8 million.
The three men who ran the mom-and-pop grocery, Fajita’s Meat and Fish at 3921 10th Ave. North where the alleged scam took place were arrested last week and face federal charges, according to court documents. Ali Jaber, Hadi Jaber and Daniel Velazquez have run the grocery since 2006.
Investigators say people who qualified for federal food stamp cards went to the market and rather than buying groceries for their families swiped their cards for cash — an illegal use of the cards.
There is more information on this case at the Sun Sentinel.
If you suspect food stamp fraud in a store near you, go here for information on how to report it.
For further information, our five-plus years of food stamp fraud posts are archived here.
Ataka leader Bozhinov: we have a lot of our own poor people to take care of! Photo: Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times
George Soros and his open-society one-worlderswill have their hands full as the unexpected (maybe not so unexpected!) flowering of the political right is coming sooner and faster than it might have if there wasn’t such a drive on (led by the UN) to pressure Europe to take in Muslims, most recently the Syrian Muslims.
Here the New York Timeswrings its proverbial hands over Bulgaria’s growing right wing power in a “news” piece filled with words meant to prejudice readers toward a leftwing view of the situation.
In fact, one interesting thing about the European rightwing is that although they are against unfettered immigration, they still believe in the social safety net that most socialist countries of Europe offer their citizens. But, here is the crux of it and it comes late in the article:
“We are not a party of xenophobes,” he (Ataka leader) said. “But Bulgaria has lots of poor people of its own that need taking care of before refugees.”
Whether it’s Europe, Canada or the US, the average citizen asks these same logical questions as I said here last week in the post about Canadian health care.
One of the most troubling questions for community members in a city or town where large numbers of refugees are arriving is—why are we doing this when we have our own needy people not being cared for?
I hear it all the time. It goes something like this: ‘we have people (Americans/our neighbors) going hungry, homeless in the streets, or the elderly in need of attention and care and yet we can bring in tens of thousands of impoverished people from elsewhere in the world? Why are our own needy so much less attractive?’
Here is the New York Times(anti-rightwing ‘opinion’ piece with my emphasis!):
SVILENGRAD, Bulgaria — After spreading turmoil and desperate refugees across the Middle East, Syria’s brutal civil war has now leaked misery into Europe’s eastern fringe — and put a spring in the step of Angel Bozhinov, a nationalist activist in this Bulgarian border town next to Turkey.
The local leader of Ataka, a pugnacious, far-right party, Mr. Bozhinov lost his seat in the town council at the last municipal elections in 2011 but now sees his fortunes rising thanks to public alarm over an influx of Syrian refugees across the nearby frontier.
Membership of the local branch of Ataka, he said, had surged in recent weeks as “people come up to me in the street and tell me that our party was right.” Ataka, which means attack, champions “Bulgaria for Bulgarians” and has denounced Syrian refugees as terrorists whom Bulgaria, the European Union’s poorest nation, must expel.An Ataka member of Parliament has reviled them as “terrible, despicable primates.”
The Socialist led government is corrupt and survives with the help of the rightwing which has given the rightwing leverage to push for things like the new border fence (mentioned later in the story).
The influx of Syrian refugees has sown divisions across the European Union as the refugees add burdens on governments still struggling to emerge from years of recession. But Bulgaria is perhaps the most fragile of all the European Union’s 28 members. Modest as the numbers of refugees are here, the entry of nearly 6,500 Syrians this year has overwhelmed the deeply unpopular coalition government and added a volatile element to the nation’s already unstable politics.
The arrival of the refugees and public fury over the stabbing of a young Bulgarian woman by an Algerian asylum seeker “has opened the floodgates” for far-right nationalists, said Daniel Smilov of the Center for Liberal Strategies, a policy research group in Sofia, the capital. “They see this as their big chance.” [Note, it’s not just Syrians trying to get through Bulgaria, but African Arabs like the alleged stabber in this case—ed]
No matter how inflammatory its message or small its numbers, Ataka has had outsize leverage since inconclusive parliamentary elections in May left it critical to the survival of Bulgaria’s new socialist-led government, which has been besieged for months by protesters demanding its resignation over complaints of cronyism and corruption.
[….]
Like many populist parties in Western Europe, Ataka mixes right-wing calls for law and order and restrictions on immigration with economic policies that veer sharply to the left.
Ataka: Illegal migrants are Islamists and scroungers!
Ataka’s one constant has been its vicious rhetoric against foreigners and minorities. Alfa Television, a station operated by Ataka, denounces the refugees as radical Islamists and scroungers who will only bring violence and deeper poverty to Bulgaria.
[….]
Mr. Bozhinov, the Ataka leader in Svilengrad, said he had nothing against legal immigrants. But he fumed against those who sneaked across the thinly guarded border from Turkey, seeing them as a threat to Bulgaria’s and Europe’s security and economic well-being. They should be either sent back or moved on to richer countries willing and better equipped to take them, he said.
“We are not a party of xenophobes,” he said. “But Bulgaria has lots of poor people of its own that need taking care of before refugees.”
Whether it is Bulgaria or America, that legitimate sentiment runs deep!
