Tag: food stamp fraud

Food stamp fraud: Nyack, NY this time

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

See a pattern!

Here are the names of those charged in yet another immigrant food stamp fraud scheme (from Nyack-Piermont Patch):

Nissar Ahmed, 59,

Shafaqat Ali, 46,

Kusum Joshi, 48,

Ansar Haniffa, 72,

Balbir Singh, 62,

Kavender Joshi, 49,

Muneer Khan, 28,

For new readers, this is my side interest—food stamp fraud.   If you don’t know how trafficking works, this Patch article has a simple definition:

According to the charges, for example, a customer would enter the store and ask the merchant for $60 in cash. The defendants would ring up a fictitious sale of $120 in qualifying groceries, and then pay out $60 in cash to the customer. The store’s account would subsequently be credited with $120 from the customer’s EBT SNAP account, providing the store a $60 profit on the illicit transaction.  [and that $60 profit comes from you!—ed]

My theory is that there is a world-wide understanding (heck, there might even be training seminars on how to do it) that the trick is to get into the US on an investor visa, buy a mom & pop store and go into the food stamp scam business and rip off the dumb infidel American taxpayer!

I bet that by now I have a hundred cases just like this one posted here at RRW.  Type ‘food stamp fraud’ into our search function and see what I mean!

African store owner in Flint, MI gets 51-month prison sentence

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You are probably thinking, that’s all!  Fifty-one months for ripping off the federal taxpayer to the tune of $612,000 in two years.  Honestly readers, that is a long sentence for convictions involving trafficking in food stamps.  Many of these guys (and women!) are released in 18 months.  And, I have yet to see one report of anyone being deported after doing time in the slammer.

And, heck, we just had a story here in December in which we were told that many of the food stamp fraudsters had a previous criminal record and were still allowed to set up convenience store businesses that trade in food stamps. That is the case for this guy Noha Fofana!

Back in August of last year, I first reported on Noha Fofana who had a previous record for visa fraud and immigration fraud, read all about it here.

Now this is the latest from the FBI on Fofana’s sentencing:

A 55-year-old Flint man was sentenced to more than four years in prison and more than $600,000 in restitution on January 8, 2013, for conspiring to commit food stamp fraud, U.S. Attorney Barbara L. McQuade announced today.

McQuade was joined in the announcement by Joe N. Smith, Special Agent in Charge of USDA-Office of Inspector General, and Robert D. Foley, III, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Detroit.

U.S. District Judge Mark A. Goldsmith sentenced Noha T. Fofana to 51 months in federal prison, to be followed by a three-year term of supervised release. Fofana was also ordered to pay $612,980.96 in restitution to the USDA-Food and Nutrition Service. This amount is to be paid jointly and severally with Fofana’s co-defendant, Akhir K. McFarland, who was sentenced on December 18, 2012, to 16 months in federal prison for his participation in the conspiracy.

Evidence introduced during the trial established that Fofana, the owner of Mandingo African Market, redeemed more than $750,000 in food stamp benefits from February 2009 to July 2011, approximately $612,000 of which was obtained utilizing fraudulent “food stamps-for-cash” exchanges. The U.S. Department of Agriculture-Office of Inspector General (USDA-OIG), which funds the food stamp program, calculated that during that same time period, Mandingo’s average food stamp redemption amount was $26,798 per month—compared to an average of $5,479 monthly redemption for other convenience stores in the area.

For new readers, if you are wondering why I write about immigrant food stamp fraud cases here at RRW, it’s because no one else does and it has become a side hobby for me.  And, besides, most of these stores are in communities where large numbers of immigrants have been “welcomed” and are on food stamps.  This is the redistribution of wealth straight up!—your tax dollars to the crooks!  And, the crooks include those who SELL their benefits for cash.

Type ‘food stamp fraud’ into our search function for dozens of similar stories.

Food Stamp fraud getting the attention of mainstream media!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update December 30th:  The New York Post has a story on food stamp fraud, but they are dancing around it.  Good quote in here though by Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, so the whole smarmy issue is percolating up to the surface.

I am so excited to report that a writer (Isaac Wolf) for Scripps Howard News Service has spent months investigating cases of food stamp fraud where the fraudster had a previous criminal record and should never have been permitted to participate in the program.

Long time readers here at RRW know that this topic—food stamp fraud—became a side hobby of mine when I noticed the disproportionate number of immigrant-run stores participating in trafficking fraud (that means purchasing stamps for cash from customers at a reduced rate but then being reimbursed by the taxpayer for the full value of the benefit).  LOL! Just look at it as a form of the redistribution by the government of your wealth!

Here is the story by Isaac Wolf at ABC News:

Within the ranks of merchants accepting food stamps are convicted criminals who have previously been caught stealing cars, committing armed assault and selling drugs.

Although strict, long-standing federal rules are supposed to prevent known thieves and cheats from participating as retailers in the food-stamp program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture rarely banishes them from the lucrative market, an eight-month Scripps Howard News Service investigation has found.

State and local law enforcement officials who have built cases against the rogue retailers — who often also trade in black-market cigarettes and sell stolen items such as baby formula or razor blades — are frustrated that taxpayers’ money continues to line the merchants’ pockets.

“The people doing this are criminals,” said Bill Chandler, who retired in 2009 as the director of the North Carolina Department of Public Safety’s alcohol-enforcement division, and is now an agent with the Sanford, N.C., police department. “They will do anything they can to make a dollar.”

Scripps reporters documented in early 2012 how the USDA has allowed storeowners previously caught engaging in food-stamp fraud to slip unnoticed back into the federal program. In response, the USDA promised to institute stronger oversight, opened a criminal investigation on a case identified by Scripps, and booted another seven stores identified by Scripps from the rolls.

Since then, Scripps has unearthed records showing 19 businesses — including ones in Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, New York and Ohio — owned by individuals whose criminal records should, under federal regulations, trigger expulsion from the $80 billion-a-year food-stamp trade, formally called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Scripps also identified eight individuals who are under active criminal investigation for food-stamp fraud and other crimes but whose stores remain in business, and another 27 stores whose owners have been caught violating the spirit of federal anti-fraud rules — by, for example selling black-market cigarettes and liquor, or obstructing investigations.

When Scripps presented a sampling of the criminal histories to the USDA in July, the agency said it would investigate.

There is more, please read it all!

Then get this, the names of three crooks identified in this story by reporter Wolf are:

Ghassan Abdelkarim

Karanjit Singh

Francisco Perez  (identified in the story as an illegal alien)

Do you see a pattern here?

Since I foolishly never set up a category for food stamp fraud when I first began writing about it nearly 5 years ago, to learn more, type ‘food stamp fraud’ into our search function for dozens and dozens of posts on the topic.

Imam sentenced in $3.8 million food stamp scam in Ohio

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is an update of a story we posted back in 2011, here and here (guns were involved), about a large food stamp fraud scheme with a local mosque leader at the heart of it.

I’m wondering what’s up with all the food stamp fraud news coming across my desk in recent weeks.  I’m wondering if the feds held up arrests and court decisions until after the election—after all, no need to unnecessarily rile up voters in advance of November 6th on such a touchy issue as food stamp fraud.

Here is the latest on the sentencing of Al-Idu Al-Gaheem, Imam of a Dayton-area mosque.

He could have gotten four years in the slammer, but he judge gave him one year and one day!   $3.8 million is a big haul!

A federal judge on Thursday sentenced Al-Idu Al-Gaheem to one year and one day in prison for his role in a scheme that bilked $3.8 million from the federal food stamp program.

Al-Gaheem, the former owner of two Dayton View businesses and the imam of Masjid At-Taqwa mosque*, was the second of four defendants to be sentenced in the case. All four defendants have pleaded guilty.

Al-Gaheem faced as many as four years in prison after he pleaded guilty in August to felony charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, food stamp trafficking and structuring transactions to avoid reporting requirements.

Al-Gaheem and co-conspirators knew what they were doing, in the usual 50 cents on the dollar scam:

Al-Gaheem worked and conspired with Abdul Yamini Sr., Abdul Qadir and Omar Yahya to defraud the food-assistance program. The men illegally paid customers 50 cents in cash for every $1 in food stamp benefits they redeemed.

Undercover law enforcement agents caught the defendants illegally trading cash for food stamp benefits and buying and selling products that are ineligible through the program, such as counterfeit clothing and firearms.

Authorities estimate that more than 1,000 transactions took place at Five Pillars Market that involved the illegal exchange of food benefits. The federal government deposited about $3.8 million into bank accounts controlled by Al-Gaheem and others as reimbursement for food benefits redeemed at Five Pillars.

Al-Gaheem repeatedly withdrew large amounts of cash from the bank account, but he always took out sums that were just less than the threshold that requires the filing of federal financial reports.

[….]

Al-Gaheem’s attorney James Fleisher argued that justice would best be served by placing his client on probation or house arrest, because Al-Gaheem is an important part of his community and some family members depend on him for caregiving and financial support.

LOL!  When he gets out he will be ordered to pay the money back that he stole (oops, received through redistribution) from you!

In addition to prison, Black also ordered Al-Gaheem to be placed on three years of community control after his release.

Al-Gaheem and the other co-defendants in the case will be ordered to pay $3.8 million in restitution to the federal government, even though authorities doubt that they can even come close to paying back the money they stole.

* Very very interesting!  Just now checking out Al-Gaheem’s mosque, I learned that Patrick Poole wrote about it here in 2008 because they invited an “Islamic hate sheikh” to Dayton.  Here is how Poole begins his Frontpage article:

Khalid Yasin is one of the most notorious Islamic hate sheikhs in the world today. He had been widely condemned from the US to Britain to Australia for his virulent Wahhabist extremism, his intense anti-Americanism (despite the fact that he is an American-born convert), his justification of Islamic terrorism, his wild-eyed conspiracy theories, and his outright racial and religious bigotry.

How much do you want to bet that some of your food stamp dollars were redistributed to Yasin!

Buffalo, NY: when rebuilding US cities with immigrants, crooks will follow

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In 2011, Christopher Coen writing at Friends of Refugees rightly criticized refugee advocates for using refugees to supposedly replenish and rebuild dying US cities.  Coen says it hurts the refugees to be used in that way—to be dropped off in slum neighborhoods.  I agree.   Here is my post on the same topic (you should take a minute and read it before proceeding here).

Buffalo, NY is the city cited by Coen and more recently I told you that Buffalo is losing its Christian and Jewish population, here.   Also, be sure to type ‘Buffalo’ into our search function for a wide assortment of cultural clash/crime problems with Buffalo’s immigrant population.

And, as I reported the other day in a food stamp fraud post, where immigrants congregate in large numbers, scammers follow.

 Operation Secret Shopper to the rescue!

Now, thanks to reader ‘alwaysright’ comes this Buffalo ‘Deli-store sting story.’  It is a new (to me!) scam involving ‘mom and pop’ delis (convenience stores) in a city that is increasingly populated with Muslim immigrants.

Here is how it works:

The petty thieves went out with shopping lists to steal for deli owners who offered to buy the stolen goods – everything from condoms to baby formula.

One deli owner’s shopping list included “25 tubes of toothpaste.” Another deli owner needed men’s shavers, and yet another needed to replenish his supply of energy drinks.

The crooks then shoplifted from the big guys: Tops, Wegmans, Target.

The thieves returned to the delis and sold the goods to the owners – at cut-rate prices – who then resold the items at big profits.

Meanwhile, residents near the small stores complained that many of the city’s corner delis were magnets for gang members, whose fighting, partying and drug dealing made life unbearable.

When police heard these complaints, several agencies got together and pulled off a sting dubbed “Operation Secret Shopper.” The operation has resulted in the closing of 20 corner delis, though some have reopened under court orders while charges are pending; the arrest of 15 store owners and their workers; and the confiscation of synthetic marijuana, several guns, fake New Era baseball caps, bootlegged DVDs and untaxed cigarettes.

Be sure to read all about how the cops nailed the crooks (it is kind of long, but fun reading).  And then work your way to the end to see the politically-incorrect names of the arrested (helpfully highlighted by me).

In addition to State Police, agencies that assisted in Operation Secret Shopper include the Erie Crime Analysis Center; the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; the Cheektowaga Police Department; the Erie County District Attorney’s Office; and the State Liquor Authority.

South District Community Policing Officer Anthony LeBron was given special recognition for his efforts in setting up the stings.

Individuals arrested on charges of possession of stolen property are: Abdilkarim Ali, 48, Nadeems Grocery Deli, 2082 S. Park Ave.; Adel Alkaldi, 25, Cazenovia Mini Mart, 2330 Seneca St.; Samir M. Khoury, 49, Ricotta’s Food Market, 206 Elk St.; Dennis Mack [shock! American name]32, and Abdul Kassem, 45, Seneca Deli, 1199 Seneca St.; Hamza Abdo, 55, Garang International Market, 325 Seneca St.; Bilal Mohamed, 24, and Jamil Nagi, 25, Broadway Mart, 1069 Broadway.

Also, Naji Alabbadi, 22, Charlies Food Market, 927 Broadway; Muafaq Majid, 28, Luckys, 729 Sycamore St.; Zaid Alhariri, 43, Super Market Express, 143 Walden Ave.; Moshin Almadrahi, 52, the Quick Stop, 1148 East Ferry St.; Omar Abdulrazak, 35, Mega-Mart, 778 Tonawanda St.; Ali Nasser, 23, M&N Mini Mart, 2360 Bailey Ave.; and Hamos Mohamed, 35, Langfield Food-Meat Market, 313 Edison St.

Haven’t you wondered why Americans aren’t opening ‘mom and pop’ stores—because they aren’t lucrative unless one gets special micro-loans tailored for immigrants and have a well-developed scammers imagination.

So this is how we are rebuilding dying cities?

Update December 15th:  Karem Almadrahi, 35 (LOL!  any relation to Moshin above?) was busted for food stamp fraud in a different Buffalo deli, here.