A South Dallas Store Owner Accused of Food-Stamp Fraud Faces 305 Years in Prison
There's not a lot of what Michael Pollan would call "food" at South Dallas' KSO Dollar Mart. Plenty of beer, wine and hair care products, according to the signs out front, but not much by way of whole grains or fresh produce.
The store nevertheless did a thriving business in the federal government's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Nothing wrong there, per se. SNAP is famously lenient on what recipients can buy ("Soft drinks, candy, cookies, snack crackers, and ice cream are food items and are therefore eligible items"
, and what stores are allowed to participate (they must offer only "three varieties of qualifying foods" from each staple food category: meat/poultry/fish; bread/cereal; milk/dairy; fruits/vegetables).
The problem, the feds say, is that KSO Dollar Mart isn't accepting food stamps so much as buying them, for $.50 on the dollar.
Store owner Kamardeen Ogunleye, 52, of Arlington, and manager Robert Gordon, 31, of Balch Springs, did this for more than three years and defrauded the SNAP program of at least $1.9 million, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Friday.
More at http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2014/02/south_dallas_store_owner_accus.php .
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