 [US Attorney's Office - Southern District of NY] Perry Carbone, Attorney for the United States, Acting under Authority Conferred by 28 U.S.C. § 515; Charmeka Parker, the Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General ("USDA-OIG"); and Christopher G. Raia, the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI"), announced the unsealing of a Superseding Indictment charging six individuals in connection with a sprawling fraud and bribery scheme that generated over $66 million in unauthorized transactions
| …that’s an awful lot of money — where did it go? To buy fancy houses, cars, and vacations, or to finance jihad somewhere exotic? |
under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ("SNAP")—colloquially known as food stamps.
This is one of the largest food stamp frauds in U.S. history. The defendants—MICHAEL KEHOE, MOHAMAD NAWAFLEH, OMAR ALRAWASHDEH, GAMAL OBAID, EMAD ALRAWASHDEH, and ARLASA DAVIS—are charged with conspiracy to steal government funds and to misappropriate U.S. Department of Agriculture ("USDA") benefits, among other charges.
DAVIS, a USDA employee, is additionally charged with bribery and honest services fraud. The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff.
Starting in 2019,
| …interesting that they started during Trump 45, then were unnoticed until just now — were they caught when DOGE walked through the files, looking to see what could be found there? |
KEHOE orchestrated a network that supplied approximately 160 unauthorized EBT terminals to stores across the New York area to illegally process more than $30 million in EBT transactions. Working with his codefendants NAWAFLEH, OMAR ALRAWASHDEH, OBAID, and EMAD ALRAWASHDEH, KEHOE submitted approximately 200 fraudulent USDA applications, misappropriating USDA license numbers and, in some cases, doctoring application documents, to obtain EBT terminals for unauthorized stores—including smoke shops and other ineligible businesses.
Critical to the scheme was ARLASA DAVIS, a longtime USDA employee who worked within the very division of the USDA responsible for identifying SNAP fraud. DAVIS abused her privileged access to federal systems to sell hundreds of EBT license numbers enabling over $36 million in fraudulent SNAP redemptions at unauthorized stores. DAVIS photographed handwritten lists of license numbers intended for qualifying stores with her personal cellphone and funneled them to an intermediary who sold them to co-conspirators, including NAWAFLEH, OMAR ALRAWASHDEH, EMAD ALRAWASHDEH, and OBAID, who then used those license numbers to fraudulently obtain EBT terminals for stores that were not authorized by the USDA to process SNAP transactions. In return, DAVIS received substantial bribes that were disguised in communications as, among other things, “birthday gifts” and “flowers.” Nawafleh, who fled the country while on bail, is also charged with failure to appear. He is allegedly in Jordan, according to the DOJ’s complaint.
| Jordan, you say? How very interesting. |
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