Tag: food stamp fraud

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.

Iraqi refugee food stamp fraudster fugitive caught in Belize

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Bet you can’t say that title five times (fast!)!

While we are on the subject of Iraqi refugee crimes (here and here) thought maybe this would be a good time to fill you in on an old story.

We first told you about Khaffak Ansari here in May.  The former Iraqi refugee who came to the US as a teen escaping, what else! Saddam Hussein, was found guilty of trafficking in food stamps to the tune of $2.5 – $3 million dollars (estimates vary, but that is your money!).  His defense in court was that stress made him do it.

And, I guess you could say he, like the Arizona Iraqi bomber, didn’t appreciate the good life we gave him.

Well, now we know that he skipped the country before he could get his light 41-month prison sentence started.

We got him back though—after he was in deep trouble in Belize for allegedly holding a woman captive against her will.  LOL! I bet he figured he would be better off extradited to the US to serve time for his scamming the taxpayer then to face whatever Belize would do to him.  Yippee!  We get him back.

Anyway, here is the latest story from the Twincities Pioneer Press ( I’m posting more than I usually do from an article like this one because I’ve seen these stories very quickly be “no longer available”):

A convicted food stamp fraudster who skipped a prison date and fled to Belize pleaded guilty to the new charge arising from his getaway.

In accepting Khaffak Ansari’s guilty plea Thursday, Nov. 29, Senior U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson of St. Paul had federal marshals keep him in custody to make sure he gets to prison this time.

Ansari, 46, of Arden Hills, must now serve a year and a day in addition to the 41-month federal term he got in a $2.5 million food stamp fraud scheme he ran while he owned Stryker Market on St. Paul’s West Side.

When Magnuson sentenced Ansari in the fraud case in May, he told him he could remain free and surrender to prison officials June 11. The arrangement is not unusual in cases involving nonviolent federal offenders.

Ansari never showed. His whereabouts were a mystery until Sept. 6, when he got into trouble with police in San Pedro, Belize; a woman who worked at a club he was managing accused him of holding her against her will.

Instead of facing charges in the Central American country, Ansari told police there he was wanted in the U.S.

He was returned to Minnesota, where he faced a new charge of “failure to appear.”

So, how did he get out of the country in the first place? He lied!  He didn’t turn his passport in as the judge instructed:

It appears Ansari could leave the U.S. because he ignored a judge’s May 2011 order to turn over his passport, and officials with U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services never followed up.

U.S. Magistrate Jeanne Graham had ordered Ansari to surrender his passport as a condition of pre-trial release in the fraud case. He had the passport when arrested in Belize.

Jeanne Cooney, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office, said Ansari had told Graham that he couldn’t find his passport.

“The court ordered him to keep looking and that as soon as he found it, to surrender it,” Cooney said. “At some point, he came across it or had it all along — I don’t know the particulars — but at some point he got it and chose not to surrender it to the courts. Instead, he took off.”

Ansari’s lawyers blamed the loss of the passport on federal agents!

In a May 5, 2011, court filing, Ansari’s attorney, Daniel Schermer, said the passport was last seen when federal agents searched Ansari’s home the previous September.

“The defendant says that he has not seen his passport since the search and believes it was seized,” Schermer wrote.

In the same document, the lawyer wrote, “The government’s attempt to incarcerate a
non-dangerous, non-fugitive solely on the hypothesis that he may flee to an unidentified country at some point in the unknown future is improper…”

By the way, this demonstrates one of the huge cultural differences we have with Middle Easterners and African Muslims—they are excellent liars, some of the best in the world, and his attorney apparently fell for it.

Speaking of lies, I suspect that his defense (stress made him do it) was (duh!) a lie as well.  In the earlier court proceeding his father argued that his son had been tortured by Saddam Hussein (really? a young boy at the time) and that he was distraught over his wife’s death.

Ansari is an Iraqi immigrant who came to the U.S. when he was 14. In a letter to Magnuson prior to his son’s sentencing in the fraud case, Dr. Tawfiq Ansari said his son had been tortured under Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The elder Ansari told the judge that his son’s mental stability worsened when his ex-wife died in the August 2007 collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis.  [Note: she was already his EX-wife at the time of her death and it was he who filed for the divorce!–ed]

There is more and it is good work by reporter David Hanners, read it all!

You silly Americans, can’t you see the logic here—Saddam Hussein tortures you, America gives you a good life, but you divorce your wife and the stress of it all sends you into a frenzy to defraud the US government (the taxpayers).

For new readers:  Following immigrant food stamp fraud is one of my extra-curricular hobbies here at RRW.  If someone out there wants to do an investigation of how immigrants purchase convenience stores and other stores that trade in food stamps and get rich by getting  into the food stamp trafficking business, type ‘food stamp fraud’ into our search function (again, a lot of your research is done for you!).  Don’t hold your breath waiting for a real investigative journalist to jump on this scam—it has a political correctness factor of zero!