Food stamp and tax fraud...

Man sentenced in food stamp and tax fraud; had sent money to family in Yemen

Kent Faulk | kfaulk@al.com By Kent Faulk | kfaulk@al.com 

on September 10, 2015 

 

The owner of a Southside Birmingham grocery store was sentenced Thursday to three years and a month in federal prison for his guilty plea to one count of tax fraud and one count of food stamp fraud totaling more than $1.6 million.

Sufyan Hazem Saleh, 33, of Birmingham, was ordered by U.S. District Judge R. David Proctor to serve three years on supervised probation after his release. Saleh is to report to prison Dec. 9, the judge stated.

Saleh also was among those arrested in June in a state food stamp fraud roundup. That probe, dubbed Operation T-bone, targeted those they law enforcement say cheated the food stamp system out of  hundreds of thousands of dollars and sent at least some of the profits via wire transfer to Yemen.

A notice issued by the Jefferson County District Attorneys Office on Thursday states that a state grand jury has indicted Saleh related to Operation T-bone. Details of the indictment were not yet available.

"I expect that case to be settled and Mr. Saleh is cooperating and working towards making restitution," Saleh's attorney, Michael Rasmussen, said after Thursday's federal sentencing.

Plea agreement

Under a plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office, Saleh agrees to pay restitution of $498,470 to the IRS and $1,125,772 to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the food stamp program.

Saleh also has agreed to forfeit another $375,220 to the government.

Saleh owns the now shuttered City Supermarket at 1531 13th Place South, a convenience grocery store that was authorized by USDA to accept food stamp benefits, according to a statement U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance, U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General, Investigations, Special Agent in Charge Karen Citizen-Wilcox, and Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Special Agent in Charge Veronica Hyman-Pillot.

People who receive SNAP program benefits, get them from the USDA on an electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards, which function like debit cards. Saleh pleaded guilty to redeeming EBT SNAP benefits for cash, which is prohibited, between January 2010 and December 2011, authorities said.

Of the nearly $1.9 million City Supermarket redeemed in EBT SNAP benefits during that period, the USDA estimated that $1,125,772 was food stamp fraud, according to the statement.

One or more cooperating witnesses for the USDA Office of Inspector General were used on multiple occasions in late 2009 and in 2010 to redeem EBT cards for cash, according to the plea agreement.  

Saleh also pleaded guilty to tax fraud for under reporting to the IRS his 2009 and 2010 income received from redeeming SNAP benefits. Saleh did not report about $1.6 million in income from food stamp redemption for the two tax years, resulting in a tax loss of about $498,470, according to his plea.

Begged for cash

According to a sentencing memorandum filed by Rasmussen in the federal case almost all the people asking him to redeem the EBT cards for cash were single mothers. "The conduct began when some recipients actually begged Mr. Saleh to give them money instead of food," the memorandum states. "They said they needed the money to pay bills, such as power bills, or for clothes, or to pay for transportation, or for something else that tugged on the heart strings."

Although Saleh's store carried beer and wine, the customers did not, as far as he recalls, ask him to sell them such items in exchange for the program money, the memorandum states. "So he believed their stories. He knew it was wrong, but he thought he was helping them," the memorandum states.

Family man

Rasmussen's memorandum also described Saleh as a man devoted to his family Saleh was born in Yemen, a country on the Southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. When Saleh was still a child, his father died on one of Yemen's many civil wars. His mother remarried and when he was 14 his mother and stepfather brought the family to Oakland, California.

Saleh became a naturalized U.S. citizen at age 21 and supported himself and his family by working in family owned convenience stores, according to the memorandum. He was married in Yemen and his wife and children lived in that country, according to the memorandum.  

"When the more recent civil war erupted in Yemen, his wife and three children fled across the Red Sea to Djobouti, a small and impoverished country on the horn of Africa," the sentencing memorandum states. "They had a difficult time finding a place to stay and making ends meet."

After a difficult and costly process, beset by bureaucratic hurdles, Saleh was finally able to get his family to the United States, the memorandum states. They arrived at the Birmingham Airport on August 14.

The children are now registered for school in Hover and Saleh is working to get citizenship for his family, the memorandum states.