From Newsgroup: nyc.politics

President Donald TrumpAs administration busted a $66 million food
stamp fraud ring in New York.

U.S. Department of Agriculture employee Arlasa Davis had one job:
stop food stamp fraud. Instead, she allegedly accepted bribes and
caused $36 million of fraud over three years by sharing government
data.

The Department of Justice charged six people for stealing over $66
million in food stamps from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program in late May.

Every year, the federal government gives billions of dollars to
poor Americans who spend that money at over 250,000 licensed
retailers ranging from grocery stores to bodegas.

The SNAP program uses federal tax dollars to help low-income
households purchase food using Electronic Benefit Transfer cards.
The federal government licenses stores to use EBT terminals to
process EBT funds from the bank account to the storeAs account.

The alleged criminal ring u Michael Kehoe, Mohamad Nawafleh, Omar
Alrawashdeh, Gamal Obaid, Emad Alrawashdeh, and Arlasa Davis u are
charged with conspiracy to steal government funds and to
misappropriate USDA benefits.

In 2019, Kehoe supplied 160 unauthorized EBT terminals to smoke
shops and other ineligible stores across the New York area to
illegally process more than $30 million in EBT transactions.

The crime ring submitted about 200 fraudulent USDA applications, misappropriating USDA license numbers and, in some cases, doctoring application documents, to obtain EBT terminals for unauthorized
stores.

The criminals sold hundreds of EBT license numbers enabling over
$36 million in fraudulent SNAP redemptions at unauthorized stores.
Davis photographed lists of license numbers intended for qualifying
stores and texted them to someone who sold them to co-conspirators,
who then used those license numbers to fraudulently obtain EBT
terminals for stores that were not authorized by the USDA to
process SNAP transactions.

The criminals could face decades in prison.

oMichael Kehoe and his co-conspirators misappropriated tens of
millions of dollars in taxpayer funds meant to help low-income
families put food on the table,o said U.S. Attorney Perry Carbone.
oThis fraud was made possible when USDA employee Arlasa Davis
betrayed the public trust by selling confidential government
information to the very criminals she was supposed to catch. Their
actions undermined a program that vulnerable New Yorkers depend on
for basic nutrition.o

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/scott-mcclallen/2025/08/02/she-was- hired-to-stop-food-stamp-fraud-she-helped-steal-36-million-instead-
n2661308

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