Category: Immigration fraud

Another Muhammad food stamp scammer sentenced to prison

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….but get this!  He stays out while his wife serves her time and neither will be deported!

I have a bunch of food stamp fraud bust stories I haven’t posted from earlier this month, this is the first I’m posting to catch up on the backlog.   There is lots of interesting information and some new twists in the case about this Pakistani pair in Kansas.  Readers take note that one of the food stamp sellers was also convicted.

From AP:

Wichita, Kan. —

A Kansas grocery store owner and his wife were sentenced Wednesday to federal prison for a food stamp scam that profited by targeting people at homeless shelters who were willing to sell their government benefits for cash.

U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten sentenced Muhammad Qadeer Akram, 47, to 18 months in prison and gave his 38-year-old wife, Shama Qadeer, six months in prison plus six months of home confinement. The judge put the husband’s sentence on hold until after his wife serves her time to allow one of the parents to be home with their young children.

The couple, who owned Alnoor Grocery and Biryani House in Wichita, pleaded guilty in September to one count each of conspiracy to commit food stamp fraud, food stamp fraud and wire fraud. Authorities say they typically gave recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, 50 to 60 cents on the dollar for the value of their food stamps. [they then collect the full dollar from you—the US taxpayer!–ed]

This is a new one!  They scoured homeless shelters looking for people willing to sell their food stamp privileges!

The couple was accused along with the owners of another small Wichita grocery store of conspiring with Wally Mikhael Gaggo, the runner who scoured homeless shelters for people willing to sell their government benefits. The government charged 13 people in two federal indictments alleging schemes that defrauded the government out of more than $580,000.

Judge went soft on them:

James McIntyre, Shama Qadeer’s attorney, argued for a lower sentence for his client based on her cooperation with the government, her community standing and the needs of her family. He contended the crime was out of character and based “on a wrongheaded effort to save a family business.”

Marten said he gave her a sentence shorter than her husband’s because he believed she would be better suited to care for the couple’s young children. “I don’t believe your culpability is any less, and may be greater than your husband,” Marten said.

Both sentences were far below the federal sentencing guidelines that called for 41 to 51 months in prison for each count, based on the findings that the fraud amounted to $450,000 and the couple had leadership roles in the conspiracy. The judge told them he was not giving them sentences that long because he wanted them to make restitution.  [How on earth will they make restitution, it would take them a lifetime to pay that much money back through legal work!—ed]

So surely the wife will be on welfare with four kids!   How about deportation to save the US taxpayer from more expense!

McIntyre had argued in his court filings that his client married Muhammad Akram, her first cousin, at age 15 in an arranged marriage and has limited education. She is a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan and has four children who live at home.

Warning to all refugees and other immigrants, selling your food stamps is also illegal!

Also Wednesday, Marten sentenced Tequita Higgins, a 28-year-old food stamp recipients who sold her government benefits, to two years of probation and ordered her to pay nearly $2,000 in restitution.

If you are new to RRW and want to know more about this massive type of fraud being perpetrated on the US taxpayer through these convenience store food stamp fraud schemes use our search function for ‘food stamp fraud.’  You will be amused (sort of!) by how many scammers are named Muhammad!

LOL!  I wonder how long Hillary will let me say stuff like this?  Islamic countries angling for speech curbs in the US, here.

Don’t make Omar Jamal the poster boy for the anti-CAIR crowd!

~ Ann Corcoran

You know I’ve been out of the loop since mid-October or so, so I didn’t know about all this business about CAIR going after Somalis Abdi Bihi and Omar Jamal in Minneapolis until I saw this post by Marisol at Jihad Watch yesterday that begins:

CAIR’s Minnesota chapter led a personal attack on the credibility of Omar Jamal and Abdi Bihi in connection with their planned presence at a conference whose literature described al-Shabaab as an “Islamic extremist terrorism organization,” to which CAIR took exception.

There are at least two noteworthy aspects to this story: First, the threats are a reprise of the old chestnut “Say Islam is a Religion of Peace, or we’ll kill you.” The second is that CAIR is caught in its own game, for as hard as it has worked to cast all criticism as incitement to a violent “backlash,” at least where Islamic teachings and advocacy groups are concerned. How about their intense criticism of Omar Jamal and Abdi Bihi? If CAIR Minnesota is to hold itself to the standards it imposes on others, it would have to apologize, shut up, pay up, and disband.

Then again, claiming victim status tends to require a certain ideological pedigree, and the right connections. “FBI Investigating Facebook Death Threats on Somali Advocate,” by Tom Lyden for Fox 9 News, December 2 (thanks to The Religion of Peace)….

Seems that Jamal now claims he is getting death threats on his facebook page.   As we have noted here at RRW (innumerable times since 2007 when I noted he defended a Somali rapist caught in the act and on camera), Jamal is a publicity hound and possibly more than that.  I call him the Somali Jesse Jackson (Frontpage Magazine writers called him the Al Sharpton of the Somali community) and he is at the center of anything to do with Somalis including driving media attention away from the Somali who died with cyanide (enough to kill hundreds) in his hotel room in advance of the 2008 Democratic Convention, here.   At that time we learned that Jamal was here illegally and had been convicted of immigration fraud in 2003 in Tennessee.  He was never deported.

Readers:  Search RRW for ‘Omar Jamal’ and you will see what I mean.

Abdi Bihi, on the other hand, seems to be the real deal and should be encouraged.   Here is one of many posts on Bihi  at RRW.  At one point I suspected that Jamal had only pretended to be on Bihi’s side to get more information to pass along—to someone.   Facebook threats from Al-Shabaab would be a very handy way to solidify one’s cover, or simply to get media attention.

Uncle Omar was never “missing”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

[Cross posted from Potomac Tea Party Report]

I’ve been away sans computer and tomorrow will get back to more pressing news, but here is a little bit of information I learned over the weekend while reading the fascinating biography of Barack Obama Sr. by Boston Globe Reporter Sally H. Jacobs.  Entitled, ‘The Other Barack,’ the book tells a truly sordid tale of the rise and fall of our President’s Kenyan father.

Here is a book review from this summer at the Washington Post so you can get an idea of the story line.  The only point you should ignore is when the reviewer draws the conclusion that the blame for Obama’s (the father) downfall belongs to Harvard for booting him out a year short of finishing a PhD in economics.  The man was a womanizer and drunk with two wives already by the time he got to Harvard; Harvard’s rejection most assuredly did not drive him to drink as the reviewer would like us to believe.

Interesting though is that the INS back in those days was willing to send a student home because of a healthy sexual appetite (and a rumor about two wives) when today you can practically murder someone and still remain in the US.

That’s not what I wanted to mention though—it’s Uncle Omar, his illegal alien Uncle, who interests me.   In ‘Dreams from my Father’ our President-to-be said that Omar (now Onyango Obama) had gone missing in the US in the early 1960′s and no one knew where he was.   Turns out not to be so, he was a well-known figure in the Boston area immigrant community and author Jacobs seemed to know all about him as she tells us on pages 151-154 in her biography of Barack Sr.

So, the shocking revelation the nation just experienced a couple of weeks ago that President Obama’s long lost Uncle Omar had been found through a drunken incident with a cop, must not have been so surprising to all those who know Omar’s story in Massachusetts.

Barack, the big shot, got to Harvard in 1962 (after abandoning wife #2 Ann Dunham and baby Barack in Hawaii).  Then his Muslim father in Kenya asked him to help get his little half brother Omar to the US.   Barack had met (!) a Radcliffe girl named Ellen Frost whose investment banker Dad was connected with the prep school Browne & Nichols.  He pulled strings and Omar Obama came to America for high school.  To  make a long story short, he screwed up, never graduated from high school, but simply stayed in Boston.

Omar legally changed his name from Omar to Onyango Obama and somehow through that name change obtained a drivers license.

Here is one of several things Jacobs tells us about Omar:

“He remained in Cambridge for several years, living in an apartment on Perry Street several blocks from his brother’s old apartment, and his residence became a legendary meeting place and crash pad for visiting Kenyan students.” ….”Perry Street was a rite of passage, an initiation.  If you were a Kenyan in Boston, you had to go there.”  (according to one account by an Obama friend).

Know too that Aunt Zeituni was there (illegally) as well hanging with the cool Kenyans.

There is more, you will have to read the book.  LOL! And, watch for a movie someday! (Not!)

So, Harvard and the INS teamed up to send Barack Obama home to Kenya in 1964, but overlooked Omar Onyango and Zeituni Obama for the next 50 years!

Trial opens today in that Minneapolis Somali murder case

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We reported the murders back in January 2010, here, a couple of Somali refugee teens shot and killed three other Somalis in a store they were attempting to rob.

There is much hand wringing in the Somali “community” about why this should have happened when the kids had everything going for them in America.

From AP at the Houston Chronicle:

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Osman Jama Elmi was manning the family corner store on a cold January night, chatting with a cousin who stopped to say hello, when two people wearing masks entered.

Within moments, Elmi, his cousin and a customer were dead, shot multiple times and lying in pools of blood.
Opening statements are expected Monday in the trial of Mahdi Hassan Ali, an 18-year-old charged with murder, in a case that rocked the local Somali community, the nation’s largest.

The ins and outs of the case follow, then this which give us a hint of the morals (or lack of morals) in the Somali “community.”  It starts with Somalis being comfortable with lying!

Mahdi Ali’s age has also been an issue leading up to the trial. Prosecutors say both Mahdi Ali and Ahmed Ali were 17 at the time of the killings, but Goetz has argued that Mahdi Ali was only 15 and should not be tried in adult court.

Goetz [attorney] has said Mahdi Ali’s legal birthdate was fabricated to get the boy to the U.S. As the case proceeded to trial, dental X-rays were ordered to try to prove Mahdi Ali’s age. Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled he would stand trial in adult court.

[…..]

Fahia [to learn more about Saeed Fahia and where his funding comes from, go here—ed] and Mohamed Hassan, another community leader, both said the killings ended the lives of entrepreneurs who contributed to the economy, but it also ruined the lives of the two teens. They want justice, but see the case as a tragedy all around.

“The kids could have been saved, and could have been the future of this state,” Hassan said. “I don’t think we are born evil. I think we are all born innocent and nice, but some way, somehow along the road, something happens.”

Yes, and what could that be?

You might be interested in one person’s view of the Seward neighborhood where this crime occurred.  Also, visit ‘Why so many Somalis in Minneapolis‘ here with more on Seward.

Update: Uncle Omar Sprung!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

More on special deals for special Obamas…..Uncle Omar (first reported here) had been quietly released from custody according to the Boston Globe:

Officials released President Obama’s uncle from Plymouth County jail yesterday after holding him for more than two weeks on an immigration detainer for violating an order to return to his native Kenya in 1992.

US officials refused to disclose any other information about Onyango Obama, who remained in the United States undetected until Framingham police arrested him Aug. 24 on drunken driving and other charges.

Yesterday, federal immigration officials refused to say whether the 67-year-old Framingham resident posted bond, whether they are keeping track of his whereabouts, or even whether they are still seeking his deportation, raising questions about public accountability in the case.

ICE is being secretive about his release and his whereabouts.

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tougher limits on immigration, said the immigration agency should be more transparent, especially in a case involving a relative of the president. She said the public deserves to know the circumstances of Obama’s release, since he violated a deportation order and is accused of drunken driving. In a criminal court, she said, that would be public information.

Read the whole article at the Boston Globe.

New to this story?  Type ‘Uncle Omar’ into our search function for all of our coverage.

Update:  After posting this I see there is an article with the Obama family tree, here.