Category: Where to find information

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.

Magical mystery tour: finding the annual reports to Congress

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

One of the goals of Refugee Resettlement Watch is to help you, the average taxpaying American, find the information on this program—which “refugees” are coming, from what country, to which states, and how much all this costs us (among other things).  To that end we have a category entitled “where to find information.”

On Monday, I mentioned that I would like to see how many Iraqis we have resettled over the years, first the ones we resettled because of Saddam Hussein the crazy and cruel dictator, and now the ones we are resettling because the crazy, cruel dictator is gone and they have a democracy from which “refugees” wish to escape.  We can always find an excuse to import the masses.

So, I went to the Office of Refugee Resettlement website to see the annual reports to Congress and lo-and-behold some of them were missing (and not just the three recent ones where the ORR is breaking the law by not reporting).

I then wrote to ORR to ask where they are and am told they are at a Georgetown University Law Library website.  I’m sure the average interested citizen should have been able to find that easily (not!).

If you are at all interested in who has come to your state and how much this all costs, please visit these annual reports.  Go to tables at the end to see stats on states, refugee nationalities and numbers of refugees and asylees resettled in your states.

One final thing—drum roll please!  The annual report to Congress for 2009 (three years late) is in the review process and should be out soon we are told!

Why wasn’t Iraqi criminal deported?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is the question that is coming up regarding the Iraqi refugee who bombed the Arizona Social Security Office last week, here.  Why didn’t we deport him the first time he committed a crime?

Over the years, I can’t point to one case (coming to my attention) of a criminal refugee being deported.  That is not to say it hasn’t been done.  The subject has come up frequently relating to Somali criminals, but one person ‘in the know’ who did work in the refugee field tells me it isn’t done—basically that we are squishes about sending refugees back to “dangerous” places.  I guess never mind that the person might be dangerous to us.

You should know that Canada has no fear of deporting criminal Somalis back to Somalia as we reported here in 2010—dropped the gangbanger right in the heart of Mogadishu!

There is a US Supreme Court decision in January 2005, here, in which the Court said a refugee criminal could indeed be deported to Somalia or to another country (gosh, who would want him!).

In the case of the Arizona refugee, Abdullatif Aldosary, if he has been here for years as some news accounts are saying, then he could be a US citizen.  But, LOL!, guess he is one more refugee who didn’t appreciate the good life we gave him.

Don’t you think it’s interesting that for a decade and more (during the Clinton Presidency and after) we were bringing in thousands of Iraqis to escape that evil Saddam Hussein.  Then we get rid of the despot (who was creating the refugees), give them a democratically elected government and we are now bringing in an ever larger number of refugees—does that make sense?

This story reminded me that we have never done a thorough accounting of all the Iraqis we’ve brought to the US (as I did with Somalis here several years ago).  So I started to search for the numbers and see that the Office of Refugee Resettlement no longer has eight years of annual reports available on line, see here (not to mention the fact that they are three years late for the recent ones!)  So pulling the numbers together is going to be a challenge—-will put it on my to-do list!

Here are some recent numbers:

Iraqi refugees resettled in 2008:  13,822

In 2009:  18,838

In 2010:  18,016

In 2011 (slowed due to Kentucky terror arrests):  9,388

Total for just those 4 years:   60,064

Those numbers come from these reports, here and here.  (Annual Flow Reports from DHS).  You might also find this Iraqi fact sheet of interest at USCIS.

Readers!  Are any of you interested in writing a book on Iraqi refugees—we’ve done your research for you!  This is the 548th post in our Iraqi Refugee category!

The Cubans are coming, but how many?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A reminder as you read this story:  “Economic migrants” are not refugees or asylees.  Refugees must prove that they are being persecuted, not simply that they want a better life economically and a job (or social services!).

Breitbart posted this UPI story over the weekend, and just now I wanted to check my usual places where I find statistics (and where I’ve told you to find stats) on arrivals, but all I get now is some DOTNETNUKE server telling me I have to download something else to get to the WRAPS website. See what you get when you go to www.wrapsnet.org.    Of course it could be me, but I am assuming the State Department is now making it harder for us to see the numbers.

So, that’s  one more reason why it’s important for the Office of Refugee Resettlement to do its job—required by law!—to send an annual report to Congress, as I mentioned here yesterday so that the Congress and you—the taxpayer—know how many you are paying for.  They have not followed the law for all of Obama’s years in office! and the squishes in Congress don’t demand it!

Here is the Breitbart post on Cuba:

The number of Cubans arriving in the United States without visas has risen sharply in the past year, U.S. officials say.

There has been a surge in Cubans traveling to the United States from other countries — including Spain, Ecuador, Mexico and Canada — the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. Greater numbers are also traveling by boat to Florida.

[….]

About 20,000 Cubans arrive every year on scheduled flights from Havana with visas. No one keeps an exact count of the others, but refugee groups estimate it is about 10,000 a year.

The Coast Guard detained 1,275 Cubans on boats intercepted before they reached Florida in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30. That was the highest number since 2008.

“The influx of Cubans into the U.S. is increasing,” said Ernesto Cuesta, who runs programs for Haitian and Cuban refugees for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Miami. The young people we are seeing are desperate. There is no hope in Cuba.”  [The Bishops should know since they are a federal contractor paid to take care of them—ed]

The hundreds of comments to the article are more interesting then this confusing story.

One commenter says that contrary to popular wisdom that Cuban-Americans vote  largely Republican, not so this time (Romney won Cuban Americans in Florida by a tiny margin, here).  Another says that non-citizen Cubans (refugees are not automatically citizens!) are voting in Florida and another, ‘Rushbabe’, (on why they are here and coming in larger numbers) says:  Freebies, from our newly re-elected Santa Claus.

To get an idea of how many Cubans are entering the US through the refugee program, you will have to visit the most recent annual report to Congress, here, for 2008 because I can’t get to that WRAPS website I mentioned above.  (The Obama Administration owes Congress for 2009, 2010, 2011 and soon 2012).   There are only two possibilities for why these have not been completed—incompetence or they are hiding something. 

Oh, and by the way, we have a refugee office in Cuba processing “refugees” into the US.

Go to the Appendix Tables, here (scroll down to near the end of the report).  On page A-1 (Table I) you can see that we brought over 345,000 Cubans through the refugee program into the US from 1983-2008.   That’s about 13,000 on average per year.  However, note that in 2008, the number has risen to 23,000 plus (and for the previous five years the numbers were over 20,000 each year).

Again, these are just the “refugee” numbers for Cubans, not numbers for all those who came into the US illegally.  As refugees they are eligible for most of the welfare goodies we offer—food stamps, Section 8 housing, medical care, SSI, education and the list goes on!

Now check out Table II and you can see that most went to Florida.   But, you should really enjoy checking out who all went to your state!

Refugees used as props again in Thanksgiving puff-piece stories

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A few years back some of us heard that the federal refugee contractors were urged to use Thanksgiving as a time to get fluffy media stories out about how the refugees are just like the original Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock.  No they aren’t.

And, before critics say I’m being too cynical, this isn’t about the individual human beings enjoying a feast, I’m cynical because the contractors who want to stay in business use them for media stunts.   Catholic Charities, a contractor, could quietly hold a dinner like this one in Jacksonville, Florida without the press, right?

And, one important thing the Pilgrims (or generations of immigrants that would follow) didn’t have  is the social safety net paid for by you—-food stamps, subsidized housing, job training, language lessons, education, medical care etc.  They had to make it or die.   Later many immigrants returned to their home countries if they couldn’t make it in America.

So, when people say we are a Nation of immigrants—the immigrants were different from today’s, they were largely European and Christian and they had to make it on their own.    We can’t have mass immigration and a socialist welfare nation, eventually we run out of other peoples’ money!
  

Here is the story from Jacksonville, but know it’s like many that have crossed my desk in the last few days from around the country.

Food is the universal tie that binds.

Refugees from Burma, Bhutan, Colombia, Cuba, Iraq and Sudan are not necessarily familiar with the concept of sweet potato pie with marshmallows on top. But they enjoyed it just the same at the Thanksgiving feast held for them Tuesday by Catholic Charities of the Diocese of St. Augustine, which runs a resettlement program to help such new arrivals acclimate, learn the language and find jobs.

[…..]

The guests of honor at the feast, held at Jacksonville’s Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, were 60 or so refugees. Most have been in the United States six months or less. In addition to sampling a variety of food from a long table filled with holiday delicacies, they played get-to-know-you games and learned about the origins of the holiday, with the help of translators.

“In many ways refugees from around the world who come to America today reflect the story of the original pilgrims that landed at Plymouth Rock,” Karolak said. “They are fleeing persecution themselves and seek a life of freedom and safety in our country.”

[…..]

The United States offers protection to thousands of refugees each year through the program, which resettles them in collaboration with rights groups and faith-based organizations such as Catholic Charities. Before coming to America, refugees must demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution in their homelands, according to Catholic Charities.

Florida Catholic Charities rolling in federal tax dollars!  This isn’t private charity!

I just checked USA Spending.gov and see that Catholic Charities in Florida directly benefits from US taxpayer ‘generosity’ to the tune of $17,405,034 in recent years.  This figure does not include what is surely coming through the refugee funds that are laundered through the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Florida readers might want to check out the Refugee Services Department for the State of Florida here.  They say $80 million came in from the feds to support 62 projects in Florida.

And, cool, they have a handy statistics page for you too—here.  You can even see what “services (welfare)” are being provided and to how many in each county!

Earlier this year we posted on the Archbishop of Miami insisting on more refugees for Florida, here.

By the way, I see a lot of readers recently are searching for information on how many refugees are coming to their state (or city).  Use the WRAPS stats here.   There are several data bases, but I find the one titled, ‘Destination city, by nationality by FY’ or the similarly titled one …by CY’ very useful.   If you visit you’ll see that St. Augustine is not listed as a destination city, but Jacksonville is.

From 2007 to 2012 Jacksonville received 4,363 people in need of services and jobs.

Others may have come to Jacksonville as secondary migrants.

‘Secondary migrants’ in refugee industry lingo are refugees who were resettled in one city and have since migrated elsewhere.  They are pretty much free to leave their resettlement city as early as 3 months after arrival (in many cases) and no one tracks where they go.