Category: Other Immigration

Huge Utah food stamp fraud bust this week

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Until some enterprising blogger comes along (or a real investigative reporter!) and writes exclusively about immigrant food stamp scams, I guess it’s my job to continue bringing stories like this one to your attention.

Utah is a “welcoming” state, so it’s no surprise that Middle Easterners (and a few others) have moved in to set up convenience stores and involve themselves in redistributing your wealth to their pocketbooks.   See below* where to find information on the refugee resettlement program in Utah and type Salt Lake City into our search function because we have written about that city, and the state, on many occasions.

So here is the politically correct Associated Press food stamp fraud story I first saw in the San Francisco Chronicle (which tells us nothing really!).  I knew this would be a good one so I went searching…

Here then is the story from Ogden, Utah’s home town paper, the Standard-Examiner:

OGDEN — A pair of federal indictments unsealed Tuesday allege a dozen people linked to two Ogden convenience stores participated in an elaborate food stamp scam that netted about $8.6 million in USDA benefits.

The stores named in the indictment handed down by a grand jury in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City are Westside Valley Market, 873 W. 24th St., and 9th Street Corner Market, 1390 9th St.

Individuals arrested in connection with Westside Valley Market include:

• Zia Atta, 38, of Ogden.

• Aweas Akbar Al-Quadri, 21, of Ogden.

• Naseer Hamad Durani, 39, of Rocklin, Calif.

• Farad Said Farani, 36, of Ogden.

• Mariana Navarro Farani, 29, of Ogden.

• Seraj Ghasem Pour Babakandi, 23, of West Haven.

•  Shershah Lodin, 39, of Pittsburg, Calif.

Those arrested in connection with 9th Street Corner Market include Atta and:

• Masood Aziz, 36, of Elk Grove, Calif.

• Diana Funez, 19, of Ogden.

• Fidel Funez-Limon, 18, of Ogden.

• Sharara Haidari, 30, of Elk Grove, Calif.

• Siavosh Sabri, 41, of Salt Lake City.

The stores are also named as defendants in the indictment.

The defendants face multiple counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud; wire fraud; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Benefits Program fraud; access device fraud; conspiracy to commit money laundering; and money laundering.

[….]

The defendants from Utah will make their first appearance in federal court today. If convicted, they face prison sentences ranging from five to 20 years on most of the charges and fines of $250,000.

This is the first time I’ve seen a case where the seizure of homes may well follow:

Federal prosecutors are seeking the seizure of homes in Elk Grove, Thornton and Marysville, Calif.; a home and commercial property in Ogden; several bank accounts; and judgments totaling $7.7 million.  [I bet most of the money is already out of the country—ed]

Then I don’t often see ICE involved so some of the perps must not be in the US legally (deport them after doing prison time!).

The investigation involving the stores is being handled by the USDA, the FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement/Homeland Security and the Ogden Police Department.

Update: Fox13 has some photos of those arrested.  Looks like a couple of Hispanics in the mix.

* Utah takes about 1000 refugees a year, most go to Salt Lake City.  My theory is that where there are burgeoning immigrant populations on food stamps, these scammers set up business.   For information on the refugee program in Utah, go here (Refugee Services Office).  Note that it isn’t the Mormon church bringing in the refugees, but Catholic Charities and the secular International Rescue Committee.  You can check out stats for Utah at that site or visit WRAPS (affiliated with the US State Department) for which refugees went to what cities in Utah, here.

Come back soon! I’ve got a new scam story from Buffalo, NY, a city with a declining Jewish and Christian population, and hope to get to it later today!   ****Update**** Here it is!  Finally got around to it—a new scam on a citywide level busted by a police sting operation.

More Muslim food stamp fraudsters get light sentences

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The first case I have today is from Reno, Nevada where a 30-year-old “college student” was busted for both food stamp fraud and for selling bath salts to infidels (well, the story didn’t use that word of course).   His name is Asowadur Khan (a common name in food stamp fraud circles).  The convenience store con-man in Hagerstown, Maryland who did time for similar food stamp trafficking fraud (and is back running his store now) and whose case in 2008 got me started on this hobby is Mohammad Khan.

By the way, I don’t know why it was necessary to identify the Reno Khan as a college student, other than perhaps he is here on a student visa (another scam for another day and another blog).

For new readers:   Following immigrant food stamp scams is a side interest of mine—a hobby!  I’m still looking for an enterprising blogger wannabe to take this subject on full time!   To learn more, just type ‘food stamp fraud’ into our search function.

From RGC.com:

A local college student has surrendered to federal authorities to begin serving a six-month prison term related to selling illegal bath salts out of his family’s Reno liquor store and engaging in food stamp fraud at the business.

Nevada U.S. Chief District Court Judge Robert C. Jones sentenced Asowadur Khan, 30, in October. Jones ordered Khan to pay $120,000 in restitution for the money he scammed from the government in the food stamp fraud between 2009 and 2011.  [$120,000 is chump change in food stamp fraud circles, but I guess its the combo of drug sales and ripping off the taxpayer that got him nailed—ed]

Khan was arrested in February during an undercover investigation by Drug Enforcement Administration investigators at Nahar Food and Discount Liquor, 600 South Virginia St. Khan owned the store with family members. [Ever wonder why so many small grocery stores/convenience stores are run by immigrants—they know the racket and they get into the US on “investor” visas—ed]

Sentenced to six months, then probation, community service, but no deportation:

During the DEA investigation, authorities learned that Khan had been using customers’ Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s Electronic Benefit Transfer debit cards to sell items with little or no SNAP eligible merchandise. He then used the debit cards to credit a bank account used by his family’s store to steal $120,000 from the government, the guilty plea said.

Following his prison release, Jones ordered that Khan be on supervised probation for one year and follow several conditions, such as completing 40 hours of community service and being restricted from working or having any association with a business authorized to accept food stamps.

Khan had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for unlawful possession of a controlled substance and unauthorized use of food stamps, a felony.

Court records show that Khan is a college student at University of Nevada, Reno and is ordered to pay $300 a month in child support for his infant.

What do you want to bet that the mother of his child is on food stamps?

Here is my second case of the day!

This is an update of a story from Waukegan, IL we posted in 2011 where Khaled and Fatima Saleh were caught red-handed with hundreds of thousands of your tax dollars in a suitcase.

Here is a bit of the arrest story.  Fatima made a run for it!

Agents executed a search warrant at Sunset Market on April 26. After the search, Fatima Saleh went to her apartment and agents observed her leaving a short time later with a suitcase and her mother, the release said.

Agents found more than $350,000 cash and more than 800 coupon vouchers for the WIC supplemental food program in the suitcase, the release said. Agents later found another $25,000 in cash in the apartment.

It is now known that the Saleh’s ripped off the US government to the tune of $850,000 in under two years and prosecutors want a whopping 2 and a half year prison sentence.  This update story makes no mention of Fatima’s attempt to make a run for it!

CHICAGO (CBS) – The owners of a Waukegan grocery store have admitted to stealing nearly $850,000 from the federal food stamp program.

Next up, sentencing for Khaled Saleh and his wife, Fatima, who ran the Sunset Food Market, 1501 Sunset Ave.

Federal prosecutors are pushing for 2.5 years in prison. [Wow!  long sentence!  Not!—ed]

On thousands of occasions, the couple illegally provided cash to customers who made fake purchases on their LINK food stamp cards.

The store owners typically split every dollar 50-50 with the customers — and kept the rest as profit, prosecutors said.  [For new readers this is the basic scam, there are various other splits from time to time, but 50-50 is the standard practice–ed]

Of course, no mention of deportation in this story either.

LOL!  This business is Obama’s backdoor “redistribution of your wealth” taken to a whole new level.

Endnote:  If someone decides to take on immigrant food stamp scamming as a project, consider correlating the scammers’ stores with the neighborhoods in which refugees are resettled or to which immigrants are generally flocking.  I noticed that in Hagerstown, Khan arrived at about the same time as refugees (big users of food stamps) began arriving.

Immigration Appeals Board will re-open Uncle Omar’s deportation case

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Barack Obama’s uncle, Onyango Obama, has been in the US illegally for decades.  In ‘Dreams from my Father,’ Obama claimed that no one in the family knew what happened to the ‘long-lost’ uncle, brother to Barack Obama Senior who was booted out of Harvard (and deported) for drinking and philandering.  When Barack, the senior, departed for Kenya without his doctorate degree, he left behind his kid brother who had just begun high school in Boston at about that time.

Now we are told, in a rare move, his deportation case will be re-visited.  Is anyone surprised?

From CNS News:

(CNSNews.com) — The U.S Board of Immigration Appeals has agreed to reopen the immigration case of Onyango Obama, delaying the deportation of the 68-year old Kenyan who violated an order to leave the United States in 1992.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed to CNSNews.com on Tuesday that Obama, who is the president’s uncle, was granted a rehearing last week and his case is being re-opened.

“The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) remanded the case back to Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) for reconsideration. It is inappropriate for ICE to offer any further comment on this case,” Brian P. Hale, ICE assistant director for public affairs, said in a statement to CNSNews.com.

Any move to reconsider a case is unusual says immigration law expert.

In 1989, an immigration judge ordered Obama, who has been in the U.S. since 1963, to be deported. He appealed and the appeal was dismissed in 1992.

Crystal Williams, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said any move to reconsider a case is unusual when there is already an order for removal.

“It isn’t common for the Board to reopen a case when there is an outstanding order of removal, as there is here, particularly with a later DUI arrest.  It happens, but not that often,” Williams said in a statement to CNSNews.com.

CNSNews.com reported in July that an ICE internal e-mail obtained by the legal watchdog Judicial Watch had confirmed that ICE had granted Obama a stay of deportation “to seek reopening of his deportation proceedings.”

For curious readers, you should know that his DUI arrest in August 2011 was not the first time he re-appeared since Obama declared him missing in ‘Dreams…’  In fact, author Sally Jacobs told us all about him in her book (which I highly recommend!) on the short and troubled life of Barack Hussein Obama, the senior, here.

Republicans would expand LEGAL immigration, including chain migration in their proposed bill

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

But, they would eliminate the Diversity Visa Lottery which I just mentioned here the other day.  Advocates for mass immigration into the US fittingly call this diversity-enhancing program “new seed” immigration.

From AP at the Washington Post on Friday (while you were relaxing):

WASHINGTON — House Republicans still smarting from their poor showing among Hispanics in the presidential election are planning a vote next week on immigration legislation that would both expand visas for foreign science and technology students and make it easier for those with green cards to bring their immediate families to the U.S.

This is generally known as chain migration (Rep. Eric Cantor is all for it according the article):

Republicans are changing the formula this time by adding a provision long sought by some immigration advocates — expanding a program that allows the spouses and minor children of people with permanent residence, or green card, to wait in the United States for their own green cards to be granted.

There are some 80,000 of these family-based green cards allocated every year, but there are currently about 322,000 husbands, wives and children waiting in this category and on average people must wait more than two years to be reunited with their families. In that past that wait could be as long as six years.

Here is the part that sounds pretty good, but will go nowhere until people across America get involved and demand that their member of Congress KILL the Diversity Visa Lottery (sometimes called the “green card lottery”).  In fact, anyone who really cared about the refugees would oppose this lottery program too because it imports the kind of immigrants who will be in direct competition with refugees for jobs.

But the legislation would still eliminate the Diversity Visa Lottery Program which gives out a similar 55,000 green cards a year to those from countries, including many in Africa, with traditionally low rates of immigration to the U.S. That prompted the House’s Hispanic Caucus, Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus to all come out against it in September.

The three caucuses said Republicans were trying to increase legal immigration for people they want by ending immigration for people they don’t want.

Ahhhhhh!  That is exactly what the goal of our immigration policy should be—-TO TAKE THE IMMIGRANTS WE WANT, THOSE THAT WOULD BENEFIT AMERICA and not the ones that will drain our resources while refusing to assimilate.

Immigration lawyers:  Looks like the Republicans are ready to talk, but this isn’t enough to satisfy us!

Crystal Williams, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the bill is a message from Republicans that “we are here and we are ready to talk about immigration reform.”

But she said she doubted it will make much progress in the Senate during the short lame-duck session. People “are now starting to think about broader reform,” she said, adding that a limited bill that doesn’t increase visas won’t get a lot of support.

Send those squishy Republicans back to the drawing board because they don’t get it—-no matter what they do it isn’t going to be enough for the Hard Left and their friends in the corporate world who need low wage laborers.

For new readers: Check out wikipedia here on the Diversity Visa Lottery, it has a pretty good write-up.  I’ve started a new category for the Diversity Visa but only have this post and a previous one in it so far.  Type ‘diversity visa lottery’ into our search function for the many posts prior to the creation of the category.

Syracuse: Palestinian lottery crooks thought their scam made sense (in their world!)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

There is lots of interesting information in this story, and some questions.  First, I want to know where are all the Palestinians coming from?  We didn’t previously take Palestinian refugees.   So, what LEGAL immigration program are they using to get in?

Seems that two Palestinian brothers in Syracuse whose parents own a convenience store (ah-hah a convenience store again, there is a tip-off) scammed the legitimate owner of a $5 million lottery ticket out of his ticket.  Suspecting a fraud, the authorities then put out a bogus news story to smoke out the crooks causing some journalists to fret about whether that was ethical.

Without further ado, here is the story (hat tip: first to Gary, then a second reader who discovered a story where the reporter had the guts to reveal the nationality of the perps.).

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — The New York State Lottery put out false information to snare two Syracuse-area brothers accused of scamming a customer out of a winning $5 million scratch-off ticket.

Lottery spokeswoman Carolyn Hapeman put out the bogus story last month, saying that 34-year-old Andy Ashkar legitimately bought the ticket in 2006 but waited several years before trying to claim the prize in March. Ashkar planned to share the money with his brother, 36-year-old Nayel Ashkar, according to the Lottery.

Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick said Lottery officials used the media to get the real winner to come forward after suspecting that the Ashkars were not the legitimate winners partly because they asked for a lesser amount if they skipped a news conference.

The brothers pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of attempted grand larceny, conspiracy and possession of stolen property. Officials allege they duped the real winner, a 49-year-old married father of two, when he tried to cash in the ticket.

The Ashkars’ lawyer, Bob Durr, said his clients maintain they bought the ticket legitimately and had good reason for not immediately cashing the winning ticket.

Feared potential embarrassment in their small Palestinian Muslim community from winning at gambling, a forbidden practice!

Fitzpatrick said the ticket owner came forward after the lottery’s planted story went public. He said the man had been fooled into giving up the winning ticket when he went to cash it at the Ashkar family’s Green Ale market in October 2006.

Fitzpatrick said Andy Ashkar told the man he had won $5,000 and successfully offered him $4,000 in cash to avoid taxes and other complications.

The brothers’ lawyer said Wednesday they did not immediately cash in the ticket because they worried about the family’s safety in the rough neighborhood if it became know they had come into money and about the potential embarrassment in their small Palestinian Muslim community from winning at gambling, a forbidden practice.

“They don’t understand why this is happening,” Durr said. “They think everything they did made sense in their world.” [So, what is their world versus our world?–ed]

According to the state lottery division’s original account, Andy Ashkar claimed in March that he bought the ticket at his parents’ convenience store in Syracuse in 2006, decided to share it with his brother, and delayed claiming the prize until shortly before it would have expired because he didn’t want the money to influence his engagement and subsequent marriage.

We are now taking small numbers of Palestinian refugees.  We didn’t previously take many because as long-time readers here know the Arabs would have a fit if we started taking too many because everyone knows they remain as “refugees” in Gaza—sixty years after they left their homes in what is now Israel— for the purpose of keeping a thorn in the side of Israel.

I just checked the stats at WRAPS (using the data for destination city by nationality by fiscal year) and it seems Syracuse has gotten a total of 4,986 refugees of all nationalities since 2007  and 102 Palestinians were distributed around New York state which had a total of over 22,000 refugees, again of all nationalities, resettled there in that time span.

However, it’s possible that this pair are not refugees but that the parents’ convenience store is part of the burgeoning foreign investment we allow into the US.  We give a special “treaty” visa for anyone (from certain countries) coming in to start a business (even if he/she is only employing a few family members).  Jordon is a Treaty investor visa country, here, and Jordon has a substantial Palestinian population, so that could be the explanation for how they got here and purchased a store (and the right to stay!).

There are also many other visa programs, here, through which the Ashkar brothers could have gotten into the US.

Question is, can we now deport them?  (after they do time that is)