Food stamps are the biggest economic multiple du

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Food stamps are the biggest economic multiple during recessions because the money flows to supermarkets and agriculture. The funds can't be spent on anything but food.

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OMG are you delusional!

My daughter-in-law was approached in a grocery store parking lot and bought a $200 SNAP card for $100. She promptly went to the police department and turned it in. Her $100 was refunded and she was told the man who sold her the card would be out of the SNAP program.

How about the food stamp recipient who sells their SNAP card for half it's value and buys drugs???

Nearly 200 Busted in $3.7-Million Food-Stamp Fraud Operation

More than a year after the Obama administration slammed American taxpayers with a record-high tab to provide an unprecedented number of people with food stamps, the fraud continues full-throttle in the bloated welfare program.

Authorities in north Florida arrested nearly 200 people for operating a sophisticated ring in which millions of dollars in food stamps were fraudulently exchanged for cash and drugs .

Keep in mind that food stamps—renamed by the Obama administration Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to eliminate stigma—are designed to help nourish the nation’s most needy.

For years Judicial Watch has reported extensively on the rampant fraud in the program that cost U.S. taxpayers a bewildering $80.4 billion in one year to provide a record 46 million people with the welfare benefit during the Obama tenure.

Even then, a federal audit revealed that many who didn’t qualify for food stamps received them under a special “broad-based” eligibility program that disregards income and asset requirements.

The expansion was part of the former president’s mission to eradicate “food insecure households” in the U.S.

To accomplish it, the administration spent millions of dollars on ad campaigns to recruit more food-stamp recipients, even doling out hefty cash rewards to local governments that signed up the most people.

One state even bragged about a $5 million performance bonus it got from the feds for its “swift processing of applications.”

Not surprisingly, the food stamp program became a hotbed of fraud and corruption .

Recipients use social media to illegally sell and buy food stamps online and others use the welfare benefit to buy drugs, weapons and other contraband from unscrupulous vendors, according to a federal audit that also says some trade food stamps for reduced amounts of cash.

The fraud costs the government hundreds of millions of dollars , the audit discloses.

This was back in 2012 when the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the agency that distributes food stamps, told Congress about the serious issues plaguing the program.

Things got so out of control that the Obama administration dedicated $7 million to crack down on food-stamp fraud in 2014 .

Among the anti-fraud initiatives that the money funded were strategies to identify and successfully investigate attempts to buy or sell SNAP benefits online using social media such as Facebook, Twitter or ecommerce websites like Craigslist and eBay.

More than a year after Obama left the USDA program in disarray, the scams continue.

In the recently busted Florida operation, more than 22,000 fraudulent transactions totaling $3.7 million were documented by a task force of local and federal authorities.

It has been coined Operation Half-Back and a Jacksonville news report says undercover officers personally observed 115 individuals commit 390 fraudulent transactions involving food stamps.

In most cases the food-stamp recipient took 50 cents per $1 in benefit. Some of the corrupt vendors were stores but many were mobile businesses that sell food and have USDA approval to accept food stamps as payment.

Among the biggest offenders are a produce business that recorded 7,164 fraudulent transactions for $1.1 million, another that had 7,390 transactions totaling $1 million, a seafood store that recorded 3,958 transactions for $1.2 million and a mobile meat vender that had 3,958 fraudulent transactions for $572,282.

The undercover sting started back in 2012, the year the Obama administration shattered food-stamp records.

Law enforcement agencies created fictitious businesses, according to the Florida Attorney General’s office, which disclosed last week that more than 115 individuals have been charged with felonies and 61 others with misdemeanors.

Though the federal government doles out food stamps, in Florida a state agency called Department of Children and Families administers it to provide nutrition assistance to vulnerable populations such as children, senior citizens and families in economic distress. “Food stamp trafficking steals from Florida’s hardworking taxpayers,” Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “The SNAP/EBT program is designed to provide services to the most vulnerable among us and for anyone to take advantage of this system is shameful.”

Florida seems to be a hotbed of food-stamp rackets. Less than two years ago the feds busted the largest food-stamp fraud operation in U.S. history in south Florida.
Twenty-two defendants in the largely black and Hispanic areas of Miami-Dade County known as Opa-Locka and Hialeah swindled the government out of $13 million by fraudulently trading food stamps for cash .

The crooked vendors operated food and produce stands at a local flea market as part of then-First Lady Michelle Obama’s initiative to eradicate “food deserts,” common in poor, minority communities where fresh, healthy food is tough to find or often unavailable.
The feds say the business owners and their employees let food-stamp recipients use their welfare benefit to get cash in exchange for a cut of the money.

https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2018/03/ne...operation/

Corner stores turned EBT cards into cash for drugs, wired profit to Yemen, authorities say



A couple of steaks shoplifted at a Gardendale Walmart three months ago led to the biggest food stamp fraud investigation in Jefferson County's history, and launched 11 simultaneous raids this morning at convenience stores countywide.

Led by the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office, teams of law enforcement officers met at 5 a.m. for a briefing and then fanned out across the county beginning at 6:50 a.m. The officers and agents were armed with 242 arrest warrants and plans to arrest 17 suspects.

All 17 suspects were in custody by mid-morning, and investigators already today have filed for forfeiture and condemnation of those 11 stores, which totals more than $1 million in assets.

"This is huge for us,'' said Jefferson County District Attorney Brandon Falls.

The massive probe, dubbed Operation T-bone , targeted those they say have been cheating the food stamp system to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars and sending at least some of the profits via wire transfer to Yemen.

The District Attorney's Office, the FBI, the Gardendale Police Department, the USDA, the Alabama Department of Human Resources and the Secret Service all worked together on the investigation. Birmingham police, the U.S. Marshals, the Internal Revenue Service, Homeland Security Investigations, Walmart Global Operations, Hoover police, Pelham police, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office SWAT team and the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency helped with today's raid in a specially-formed task force.

At the heart of the operation are Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards, a government-issued debit card that replaced food stamps.

There are more than 900,000 people who get government assistance through the EBT card in Alabama each year, and they are allowed to use the cards for food, non-alcoholic beverages, and other basic needs, mostly through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The investigation began in February when Gardendale police arrested a man for shoplifting steaks and some other items at Walmart in that city. When they interviewed the suspect, he said he was boosting the items to give to two convenience stores, and he named the stores, authorities said.

Investigators contacted Walmart's Global Investigations Unit in an effort to let them know they would like to attempt to sell property represented to be stolen to those stores, but when they told Walmart the nature of their probe, they learned the conglomerate was already investigating those two convenience stores for EBT fraud. Simply put, they learned, the store owners and managers were using EBT cards that did not belong to them to buy goods in bulk to sell at their stores.

Falls said they learned owners of numerous convenience stores in the Birmingham area have been buying EBT cards from those who have been issued the cards for roughly 50 cents on the dollar. In other words, if someone had $150 on their EBT card, the store owners and managers would buy those cards for $75.

The government reloads money onto those EBT cards monthly. Once the store owners and managers bought the cards, they would then go to a wholesaler where they would buy goods and bring them back to their stores to sell at a further inflated price.

In return, the person who sold their EBT card now had cash to buy items not allowed to be purchased under the government system, such as alcohol, tobacco and drugs.

"They're selling their cards to get those things, '' Deputy District Attorney Cynthia Raulston said.

"Part of the problem, in my opinion, is now they don't have their food stamps card so they don't have the money to take care of their families or themselves,'' Raulston said. "I think it's a huge cycle of remaining impoverished."

"One of the biggest issues is they're marking up these items in the stores and charging more than what retailers would charge and they're in the middle of food deserts with no transportation so they don't have a lot of options,'' Raulston said. "It's not only the EBT card beneficiaries, but you've got the working poor paying marked up prices. They're getting ripped off."

How big is the problem? "It is enormous. It is pervasive,'' Raulston said. "We actually had to cut off the number we were going to prosecute this round, and this will be an ongoing investigation and prosecution for our office."

"It's apparently rampant,'' she said. "If you just wander into the community and say something about a beneficiary card, someone will sell you one. It's everywhere."

Those arrested in today's raids are: Jowher Almnasoob, Abdulrahman Alqublani, Ismail Hassan Elnaham, Saleh Yahya Rowaid, Ramzi Jowher Ali Almansoob, Mujahed Jowher Ali Almansoob, Bashir Abosaleh Mohamed, Fouad Zamzami, Muneer Zindani, Sufyan Saleh, Mansoor Almansoob, Audrey Morris, Jerry Brown, Keith Lee Lucas, Travis Wayne Holmes, Murad Nooruddin and Mable Olympia Kirksey.

They were arrested on charges including public assistance fraud, fraudulent use of a credit card and theft of property, which are felonies. All of those arrested are U.S. citizens, Falls said.

The following stores were raided and now will be subject to forfeiture and condemnation: Graymont Grocery on Graymont Avenue; R&S Supermarket, 326 6th Ave. South; Nana's Supermarket, 400 1st Street South; 3rd Avenue Package, 1501 3rd Ave. West; Bessemer Market, 2931 Dartmouth Avenue; 40th Street Grocery, 1200 40th Street; Christy's Texaco, 201 6th Ave. S.W.; Uptown Grocery, 1531 12th Court North; Triple M Food Mart, 1546 FL Shuttlesworth Drive; R&F Inc. Convenience Store, 5612 1st Ave. South; and Munchies-Avondale, 4100 5th Ave. South.

https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/...t_car.html


What $20 million in alleged food stamp fraud bought these 12 people: prosecution [/b

South Florida reached another fraud milestone for what the Justice Department called “the largest combined financial fraud loss for a food stamp trafficking takedown in history.”

That dubious new record, federal prosecutors claim, is $20 million and resulted in a dozen charged with doing the government dirty via food stamp fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

The 12 charged over four cases are Hasan Saleh, 59, Mohammed Alobaisi, 37, Reynold Francois, 38, Ihab Hassouna, 44, Mohammad Alteen, 33, Maria Jerdana, 36, Joe Ann Baker, 56, Yousef “Joe” Homedan Zahran, 60, Omar Hajje, 43, Jalal Hajyousef, 42, Andy Javier Herrera, 24, and father Javier Herrera, 49.

“In this instance, eight small convenience stores in South Florida committed a staggering amount of fraud in a relatively short amount of time,” said Karen Citizen-Wilcox, special agent in charge, U.S. Department of Agriculture-Office of the Inspector General, in a release.

“These retailers created an illegal benefits exchange system that defrauded the American taxpayer and denied healthy foods to needy children and their families. The store owners who allegedly orchestrated this trafficking scheme pocketed millions in ‘fees’ which they charged for converting food assistance benefits into cash.”
Some of the defendants owned, worked at or operated stores authorized to accept Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program payments, known as SNAP. Others worked at stores not authorized, but allegedly used the point-of-sale terminals for stores that were authorized.

The fraud happened like this, according to authorities: A store clerk swipes a person’s electronic benefits card at a point-of-sale terminal for a large amount. The person with the card is paid a lesser amount in cash. The remainder is ill-gotten profit for the store owner.

Saleh managed Four Corners convenience store, 821 NW Sixth St. in Fort Lauderdale, which wasn’t authorized to take SNAP payments. Prosecutors say Saleh and other Four Corners employees used the point-of-sale terminals at Liberty City’s Sparkle, 6530 NW 18th Ave., run by Alobaisi. Prosecutors say that from April 2015 through this past August, Saleh, Alobaisi and employees Francois, Hassouna, Alteen, Jerdana and Baker stole $2 million with the scheme.

Case No. 2 involved Zahran, also known as Youssef Hussein, who worked at Pompano Beach’s Community Food Store, 401 NW 27th Ave. He is being accused of being on the fraud train a relatively short time, Nov. 3, 2016, through Jan. 11.

Hajje and Hajyousef owned Steve Market 2 and Yum-Yum’s grocery, stores across the street from each other at 6804 NW 15th Ave. and 6813 NW 15th Ave. in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood. They allegedly fraudulently acquired $4.2 million.

But federal prosecutors give the money title, $10 million, to the Herreras, who also allegedly ran their game longer than everyone else — April 2012 through last month. Andy owned Santa Ana Market II, 1832 NW 17th Ave. in Miami. Father Javier worked there and Santa Ana Market, 3000 NW 12th Ave. Javier has convictions for third-degree grand theft and lottery violations on his rap sheet.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/commun...38086.html

Woman ordered to repay $400K for food-stamp fraud

A woman who abused a federal welfare program owes the government $400,000, a federal judge ruled Monday.

The suspect, Hee Ja Jeong, was sentenced in U.S. District Court here to eight months of house arrest and five years of probation. Guam has been a U.S. territory since 1898.

In March 2014, Jeong signed a plea agreement in which she admitted to a single count of unauthorized use of food stamp benefits, but over more than two years she reportedly cost the U.S. Department of Agriculture hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Jeong’s Harmon, Guam-based convenience store, New Family Market, was one of four convenience stores identified in May 2014 as possible abusers of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the successor to the federal food-stamp program.

Court rules for greater access to food stamp data

The average transaction amount with SNAP benefits at a convenience store in Guam is $13.03, according to a search warrant application filed in July 2013. Many of the purchases at the four stores ranged from $100 to more than $500.

Documents indicated that during summer 2013, federal agents secured warrants for the stores under suspicion of abuse.

The stores all reportedly allowed federal benefits recipients to purchase ineligible items with their electronic benefit transfer cards such as diapers, cigarettes and betel nuts — the seed of an areca palm tree that acts as a mild stimulant — according to court documents.

They also allowed recipients a store credit at the end of the month when customers in the federal program ran out of SNAP benefits, provided they paid the balance with their SNAP cards when they received money at the first of the month. Some stores charged additional fees for buying on credit.

Jeong allowed customers to use their SNAP benefits on credit from April 2011 through the beginning of August 2013, according to her agreement.

She “engaged in fictional and illegal transactions with SNAP recipients that purported to be for eligible food items in order to fraudulently obtain the monetary value of SNAP benefits,” the documents showed. That scheme involved allowing customers to make SNAP purchases on credit and using recipients’ benefit cards and PINs to process the transactions.

While the woman admitted to allowing customers to make purchases on credit, she denied ever charging them fees or interest to do so, Jeong’s lawyer, Peter Perez, said during a court hearing Monday. Jeong allowed customers to buy on credit because they asked to do so, not as others had implied because business was slow.

Both Perez and the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Marivic David, agreed that Jeong had cooperated with prosecutors, earning herself a reduced sentence.

In January, Kun Sup Song, operator of Sky Mart in Yigo, Guam, received the same sentence for a similar scheme. He was ordered to pay about $170,000 in restitution.

Additional cases remain under investigation, David said..

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/20...e/4458885/

14 Arrested In Raids Related to $16 Million Food Stamp Fraud


BALTIMORE (WJZ) — More than a dozen retail store operators in and around Baltimore have been charged in connection to a huge food stamp and wire fraud scheme.

The indictments allege the retailers received more than $16 million in federal payments for transactions in which they did not provide any food, a fraud scheme commonly known as “food stamp trafficking.”

In Maryland, the program provides eligible individuals with an electronic benefit transfer (EBT) card, which operates like a debit card. Authorized retailers use a terminal that checks the card information and deducts the cash value of the purchase from the SNAP balance.

SNAP reimbursements are paid to retailers through electronic funds transfers. Retailers bill the government in return for providing approved food items to customers.

The indictments allege that the defendants illegally exchanged EBT benefits for cash, instead. To avoid detection, they debited the funds from the card in multiple transactions over a period of hours or days, or called a different store where the transaction was processed manually, the Department of Justice says.

As a result these transactions, they allegedly obtained more than $16,482,270 in EBT deposits for transactions in which food sales never occurred or were substantially inflated and split the proceeds with food stamp recipients.

“The food stamp program is intended to put food on the tables of needy recipients, not to put money in the pockets of greedy criminals,” said U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein. “Honest storeowners work hard to earn a profit by actually selling food, and food producers and distributors also benefit. People who play by the rules deserve to know that criminals who defraud them will be held accountable.”

The defendants face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for each count of wire fraud; a maximum of five years in prison for conspiracy to commit food stamp fraud and wire fraud; and a maximum of five years in prison for food stamp fraud.

The defendants and their stores are:

THEY ALL SOUND LIKE MUSLIMS TO ME!

Walayat Khan, 36, of Reisterstown
Barbara Ann Duke, 50, of Owings Mills

Maria’s Market Place, 307 S. Broadway in Baltimore and Royals Food Market, 921 E. Patapsco Avenue in Brooklyn. From October 2013 to June 2016, Khan and Duke allegedly obtained more than $1,486,118 in payments for food sales that never occurred.

Shaheen Tasewar Hussain, 60, of Ellicott City

Shop & Save, 301 Crain Highway South, Suite D, Glen Burnie. From July 2014 through October 2015, Hussain allegedly obtained more than $778,183 in payments for food sales that never occurred.

Kelym Novas Perez, 34, of Baltimore
Jose Remedio Gonzalez Reyes, 50, of Baltimore

Kelym Grocery, 2734 Pennsylvania Avenue in Baltimore. From August 2013 through March 2016, Perez and her husband, Gonzalez Reyes, allegedly obtained more than $879,500 in payments for food sales that never occurred.

Mulazam Hussain, 54, of Windsor Mill

Monroe Food Mart and Y&J Grocery in Baltimore. From March 2013 through July 2016 Hussain allegedly obtained more than $1,242,745 in payments for food sales that never occurred.

Mahmood Hussain Shah, 57, of Catonsville
Muhammad Rafiq, 58, of Reisterstown

Corner Groceries, 1242 Darley Avenue in Baltimore. From October 2010 through August 2016, Shah and Rafiq allegedly obtained more than $1,610,556 in payments for food sales that never occurred.

Mohammad Shafiq, 50, of Gwynn Oak, Maryland; and his daughter,
Alia Shaheen, 24, of Baltimore

Quick Stop Convenience Store, 237 N. Patterson Park Avenue; New York Food Mart, 1201 N. Patterson Park Avenue; and Barclay Food Mart, 2454 Barclay Street, all in Baltimore; and Shafiq Corporation, 6929 Holabird Avenue, in Dundalk, Maryland. From about October 2010 through July 2016, Mohammad Shafiq and his daughter, Alia Shaheen, allegedly obtained more than $3,712,353 in payments for food sales that never occurred or were substantially inflated.

Mohammad Irfan, 59, of Nottingham
Muhammad Sarmad, 40, of Nottingham

New Sherwood Market, 6324 Sherwood Road in Northwood, Maryland; Martin Mart, 1504 Martin Boulevard in Middle River, Maryland; Rosedale Mart, 6326 Kenwood Avenue in Rosedale, Maryland; and M&A Mart 7400-A Belair Road in Baltimore. From October 2010 through August 2016, Irfan and Sarmad allegedly obtained more than $3,550,662 in payments for food sales that never occurred.

Rizwan Pervez, 38, of Essex

M&N Mini Mart, 1846 W. North Avenue; and Mega Mart1, 1522 Ellamont Street, both in Baltimore. From April 2014 through July 2016, Pervez, allegedly obtained more than $1,689,511 in payments for food sales that never occurred.

Kassem Mohammad Hafeed, a/k/a Kassam Mohammad Hafeed, 51, of Baltimore

C&C Market, 4752 Park Heights Avenue in Baltimore. From November 2010 through April 2013, Hafeed allegedly obtained more than $1,532,642 in payments for food sales that never occurred.

https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2016/08/30/14-...amp-fraud/

Woman faces felony in $3.4K food stamp fraud case

An Upper Nazareth Township woman was charged with welfare fraud in the state's food stamp program.

Stephanie N. Dezzi, 32, of the 100 block of Fourth Street, was charged April 20 with receiving $3,440 in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits -- food stamps -- when her financial situation didn't justify it, according to the Pennsylvania Inspector General's Office in Allentown.

Dezzi gave up her right to a preliminary hearing on the charge, which is a felony due to the amount, and carries possible penalties of seven years in jail and a $15,000 fine, according to court records and the statute.

When Dezzi applied for assistance on Oct. 9, 2015, she reported she was living with her two children and no one else, authorities said. She also said she was working part-time at Century 21 and provided proof of income, court papers say.

When she submitted a semi-annual report on May 3, 2016, she didn't state any change in her circumstances but did not verify her income, so her benefits were suspended, according to court records. She then requested the benefits be terminated and they were ended effective April 30 of that year, court papers say.

Dezzi's husband Raymond is employed full-time with the Forks Township Police Department and in 2014 earned $80,537 as a corporal, records show.

"This household income and accurate household composition was unreported to the Northampton County Assistance Office," court papers say. The charge was filed in District Judge Antonia Grifo's court in Downtown Easton.

Northampton County Assistant District Attorney James Augustine said the crux of this type of case is whether Dezzi and her husband were living separately while she received the benefits. While she says they were maintaining separate homes, there's evidence gathered by the inspector general's office that they were together, Augustine said.

"That's going to be the issue," he said.

The Dezzis own a home in Upper Nazareth. Under the law, Stephanie Dezzi would have to repay the $3,440.

Township police Chief Greg Dorney said Raymond Dezzi faces no charges and his job was in no way impacted by the case against his spouse.

While the Dezzis were married the whole time in question, neither Dorney nor Stephanie Dezzi's attorney Thomas Joachim would say if the couple were separated at any point in those six months.

Stephanie Dezzi faces a formal arraignment Aug. 3 in Northampton County Court.

"We're working on a mutually beneficial resolution on this matter," Joachim said Tuesday.

Augustine said cases like this don't usually go to trial.

Stephanie Dezzi does not have a criminal record. Acceptance into Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition -- a probationary program that, if successfully completed, leads to the charges being removed from her record -- is seldom allowed in such cases but possible, he said.

Augustine said he discussed a few options with Joachim but they haven't reached an agreement.

"I'm sure we can work something out," he added.

https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/easton/index...ral_is_cha.

16 arrested in food stamp fraud investigation [/b

https://www.elpasotimes.com/videos/news/crime...102038684/

How much did fraud grow?

It jumped to $592.7 million in 2016, up a staggering 61% from $367.1 million in 2012, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The monetary figures are "Fraud Dollars Determined By Investigations."

In other words, these figures are based on identified incidents.

In 2016, the number of fraud investigations totaled 963,965, up more than 30% from 2012. (Side note: Almost half of those investigations were in New York State, according to the report.)

On fraud, the USDA says the following:

In SNAP, fraud is typically defined as the exchange of benefits for cash or other ineligible items (trafficking) or purposefully misrepresenting information on your SNAP application in order to receive benefits that you are not entitled to or more benefits than you are entitled to receive.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonconstable/2...8ee758f880