Tag: food stamp fraud

Syracuse: Palestinian convenience store owner/sons admit guilt in lottery ticket theft case

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

One is sentenced to prison.  Dad gets no jail time.

Judge: ‘Andy’ Ashkar exhibited “rapacious greed.”

This is an update (thanks to a reader) of the Syracuse convenience store case where Palestinian Dad and two sons conspired to steal a lottery ticket worth five million dollars from a man who was drug-impaired at the time.

You might want to revisit our 2012 post for background.  This is part of an on-going hobby of mine to report on crimes at immigrant-run Mom & Pop grocery stores.   I wouldn’t be surprised if this trio was also into the food stamp fraud racket.

Here is the news last week at the Huffington Post:

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — A central New York maintenance worker duped out of a winning $5 million scratch-off ticket will get his money next month, seven years after being scammed out of the jackpot, state lottery officials said Thursday.

The Gaming Commission has verified that the ticket belongs to Robert Miles of Syracuse, officials at the agency said. He’s expected to receive his jackpot within the next couple of weeks.

Read it all.

Punishment for Nayef Ashkar: can’t sell lottery tickets for the rest of his life—wow! that is tough!

Now here is a report about the one brother, Andy Ashkar who was sentenced to prison time in July.

Ten months ago, Andy Ashkar, was receiving congratulatory calls after news spread that he and his brother claimed a $5 million lottery prize. This week, Ashkar is behind bars after a judge sentenced him to 8 to 25 years for having the ticket that was stolen from his parents’ convenience store.

During his sentencing on Tuesday in Syracuse, N.Y., Onondaga County Court Judge Joseph Fahey told Ashkar, 35, “You exhibited some of the most rapacious greed I’ve seen in a long, long time.”

Here is a story about Daddy Ashkar who was convicted of a felony, but received no jail time.

Just for your information, we don’t take too many Palestinian “refugees” so it’s not clear how this family of crooks got here but possibly through one of the State Department’s “investor visa” programs.  Reminder! This is a wide-open field for investigation by a blogger wannabe!

For more on problems in Syracuse, go here, for all of our posts on the joys of diversity in that “welcoming” refugee resettlement city.   Among other things, you will learn more about immigrant “entrepreneurs” scamming the US taxpayer through food stamp fraud.

Ohio: More of those charming “Uzbek refugees” in trouble with the law

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Monday morning diversity is strength alert!

Over the last few years we have covered the story about Uzbek’s getting into the US as “refugees” thanks to a secretive ‘airlift’ by the US State Department and possibly the CIA (Was the CIA involved behind the scenes in Uzbekistan?) during the Bush Administration and in the wake of the Andijan Uprising in 2005.

Here is what I said in a post in 2011.  This is based on my assessment from reading many accounts of what happened, but as far as I know NO REAL INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER WITH A MAINSTREAM MEDIA NEWS OUTLET HAS EVER TRIED TO GO DEEPER.  It is time someone did, as some of the Uzbek “refugees” are turning up as criminals and terrorists (see all of our Uzbek posts, here).  This is me in 2011:

At some point I need to look more closely at the case of the Uzbek refugee airlift to the US in the wake of the Andijan uprising.  In a thumbnail, Uzbekistan’s President is a secular Muslim (if there is such a thing) and a group of fundamentalist Muslims were working on an uprising, so supposedly government soldiers, at President Islam Karimov’s direction, opened-fire on a demonstration and killed many (the 2005 Andijan massacre).  The survivors went to nearby countries to escape and thus became “refugees.”

Please remember this is a very simplified version of events.  So, they were designated refugees but wished to stay in Europe (they were initially taken to camps there and wanted to stay near their families still in Uzbekistan).  The US State Department, in its infinite wisdom, said, NO, we are taking you to American towns and cities and dropping you off whether you like it or not!  So, we actually expedited the process and flew an unknown number to your neighborhoods.

Now here is the latest “Uzbek refugee” crime story which, what a surprise, involves food stamp fraud!   Hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers.’   Note too that the men arrested in Dayton, Ohio are actually Turks (Meskhetians?) but got into the US as Uzbeks.

From WHIOTV:

DAYTON —

The men arrested in an Aug. 23 raid of their rented Allen Street home are suspected of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, illegally obtaining food stamps and a weapons charge.

Muzaffar Mirsoliyev, 28, and his 51-year-old father, Mustafo Mirsoliyev, both Turkish immigrants who were refugees from Uzbekistan in the mid-2000s, had criminal complaints against them unsealed in U. S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio in Dayton.

Mustafo Mirsoliyev appeared at a detention hearing. Muzzaffar’s hearing was delayed until Friday. Muzaffar’s Russian wife, Fanisa Shaydullina, faces a weapons charge and authorities say she has been in the country illegally for about two years.

Shaydullina, who was previously identified as Turkish, has been put on 24-hour home detention and her case has been transferred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Unsealed search warrant affidavits obtained by the Dayton Daily News show that Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Michael Bush suspects the Mirsoliyevs of a scheme to defraud the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

Wednesday, the Mirsoliyevs remained in the Montgomery County Jail on a federal detainer.

All three were arrested during the raid at 245 Allen St. during which multiple law enforcement agencies seized an AK-47 rifle and a computer.

For a chuckle, new readers might want to visit our post in August about how open borders advocate David Lubell (product of Nashville, TN) was in Ohio (Cleveland) to promote the joys of multiculturalism.

… be sure to re-visit my post of a couple of weeks ago about how David Lubell and ‘Welcoming America’ has just kicked-off its Cleveland campaign to convince residents that diversity is beautiful and they need to embrace more of it!  Entrepreneurial immigrants will save the city from economic ruin, they say.

Is Ohio becoming the immigrant-run food stamp fraud capital of America?

How to report Food Stamp Fraud

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
EBT Nation!

I’ve been writing about Food Stamp Fraud as a hobby here for nearly 6 years, but had never seen the USDA information on how to report it.  I know in my county a few years back, watchful citizens reported it to the local Police Chief who took it from there and the fraudster was busted.

If you see any suspicious activity at your local convenience store, say something. 

For all of our coverage of food stamp fraud busts involving immigrant-run stores, click here.

This just popped up in my alerts:

How Can I Report SNAP Fraud?

If you see or hear about SNAP fraud, tell us. Help us protect your tax dollars.

FNS takes aggressive measures to fight all fraud. We appreciate the help of concerned citizens.

    • Fraud reports of any kind may be filed with the USDA Office of Inspector General.

      • Call
        • (800) 424-9121
        • (202) 690-1622
        • (202) 690-1202 (TDD)
      • Write
        • United States Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General PO Box 23399 Washington, DC 20026-3399
      • Online

  • You can also report fraud to your State. This is especially important if you think that someone lied about their income or assets, or is misusing their benefits.

Your report is confidential.

Help us Fight SNAP Fraud.

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.

Mohammad D. Mohammad food stamp fraud case, tip of iceberg says Heritage researcher

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Last week we told you (here) about the bust on a convenience store in culturally-diverse Cleveland where chief perp Mohammad D. Mohammad and partners ripped-off the US taxpayer for $780,000 in a long-running food stamp trafficking scheme.

Cleveland ‘Mom & Pop’ store where Mohammad ripped off taxpayers (aka infidels) to the tune of $780,000!

The case was used in a story posted at MediaTrackers to give a lead-in to a new report on how widespread the fraud is.

The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector called cases like Mohammad’s—the “tip of the iceberg.”

A recently released USDA study found that the payoff for food-stamp traffickers has increased by over 256 percent since 2002. The nation’s food stamp rolls have increased dramatically in the past several years.

According to the study, the absolute dollar value of food-stamp fraud has increased, but government researchers found that more businesses were participating in such fraud — especially grocery stores in low-income neighborhoods, such as the Mount Pleasant neighborhood where Mohammad and Damra ran his scam for nearly a decade.

In an interview with Media Trackers, Heritage Foundation senior research fellow and domestic-policy expert Robert Rector indicated the Mohammad case was likely “just the tip of the iceberg.”

You can find the August 2013 study here. One finding of the report, using data from 2009-2011, is this:

A variety of store characteristics and settings were associated to the level of trafficking. Small stores—largely composed of smaller and medium sized groceries, and convenience stores—accounted for about 15 per cent of all redemptions, but were estimated to account for 85 percent of all trafficking redemptions.

I didn’t read the study, but I doubt they did any research on how many of these stores are run by immigrants.

For dozens of similar cases, click here for our entire ‘food stamp fraud’ archive.