Tag: Arizona

Arizona: So where is the wine bar/cafe to benefit poor Americans?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Catholic Charities Community Services of Arizona has launched a new enterprise to benefit refugees surely using mostly taxpayer dollars.  From their latest Form 990, here (page 9), we learned that of the $26 million they took in that recent year, $23 million is from taxpayer funds.

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted blessing the Refugee Cafe.

Call me a cynic!  But, why are they in the “business” of setting up wine bars and cafes, and why do they find the world’s downtrodden of more interest than the local downtrodden?  That last is what I don’t get?   Why is the “other” more attractive (cool!) to them?  Or, perhaps this is just clever marketing for Catholic Inc.?

From the Catholic Sun (hat tip: Joanne):

A new coffee shop and wine bar has commuters and residents in the Camelback Corridor investing in more than a little “R and R.” They’re supporting the livelihood of local refugee families.

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted blessed The Refuge AZ, a new coffee shop and wine bar Dec. 5 as part of a grand opening and “coffee cake cutting” event. It opened this fall as a social enterprise effort of Catholic Charities Community Services.

The café, 4727 N. 7th Ave., sits just south of Catholic Charities and has already provided supplemental support to 20 refugee families in its first seven weeks of business. Local refugee families that are also Catholic Charities clients benefit from food and beverage sales including Café Esperanza, a private label blend that customers can bring home.

I bet there are some “long periods of suffering” right there in Arizona!

Bishop Olmsted called The Refuge a great project and looks forward to coming back. He commented on the many refugees who come from far away, especially the Middle East after long periods of suffering.

“We have the privilege and the honor of receiving them and loving them in this place,” the bishop said. “Refugees need to be able to make a livelihood for themselves.”

They have a vice president of business development at Catholic Charities?  Are they using taxpayer dollars to out-compete a private business of this kind with refugees as the drawing card?

Steve Capobres, vice president of business development for Catholic Charities, said it was important to give refugees a venue to showcase their artistic and musical talents. As ambassadors welcoming nearly 1,000 refugees a year to the community, he said new outreach through the café is the least Catholic Charities can do.

I’ll bet a million bucks that if they weren’t being funded by you, and had to use private charitable gifts, there would be no cool refugee cafe.

Arizona: Largest food stamp fraud bust in state’s history

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update September 1:  I just came across this handy information on how to report suspected food stamp fraud in your town!

When I saw the first reports around the country about this case that involved a SWAT team, I had to laugh because those reports all just said “three men with the same last name”—no photo, no name!   Now, I see the story got wider coverage and there was no hesitancy by the likes of the Daily Caller to name names.

The Sweiss family fraudsters! (alleged fraudsters) Every time I see a warm and fuzzy story about immigrant entrepreneurs helping the US economy, these are the kinds of faces I see.

By the way, the perps are a father and two sons with the last name ‘Sweiss’.  I looked around a little and see that they might be Jordanian.  In any case, their passports have been confiscated.

From the Daily Caller:

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne announced the state’s largest undercover food stamp fraud bust and the arrests of three individuals involved on Thursday.

K & S convenience store employees Kameel Sweiss, 51, Ameer Sweis, 22, Faday Sweiss, 33, were arrested Wednesday for allegedly illegally conducting an enterprise, fraudulent schemes and artifices, money laundering, unlawful use of food stamps and computer tampering.

According to Horne, Wednesday morning SWAT units of the Phoenix Police Department entered the K & S convenience store to execute search warrants and seized $32,876 in cash, a key to a private bank vault holding $550,480 in cash, bank records, accounts, food stamp cards, business ledgers and three vehicles.

[….]

“This business was stealing taxpayer money by allowing a person with a food stamp card to purchase something small, such as a bag of chips, and then overcharge that card to make a fraudulent profit,” Horne explained in a statement.

“This seizure is the largest in our state’s history with regard to food stamp fraud and should serve as a strong warning to those who continue to engage in these kinds of illegal actions,” he added.

For new readers, we follow immigrant food stamp fraud here as a hobby.  I’m still waiting for a would-be blogger to take this on as a full time project.  I promise there are stories daily on immigrant-run ‘mom & pop’ groceries ripping off the US taxpayer.  Type ‘food stamp fraud’ into our search function and you will see dozens and dozens of posts about this type of fraud from coast to coast.  And, by the way, this may be the largest in Arizona so far, but it’s not the largest we have reported from elsewhere in the US.