The masterminds behind the latest food stamp fraud were arrested Tuesday for allegedly conspiring to defraud the food stamps program by charging off fictional purchases at stores, owned by this group of religious leaders.
Fraud is rare within the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) system, accounting for just 1.3 percent of all food stamps benefits in the most recent audit of the system by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2013.
ThinkProgress described this particular scam as uncommon for its brazenness. While most trafficking of food stamps benefits are concentrated within tiny convenience stores that conduct normal business as well, these stores were set up for fake purchases on a large scale, without the exchange of any actual food products.
Shockingly, the 11 men and women arrested are members of polygamist Warren Jeffs’ Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, including his brothers Lyle and Seth. They have run Jeffs’ outfit since he was convicted of sexually assaulting two young women he described as his wives. Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison for the statutory rapes, which took place when the girls were only 12 and 15 years old.
The two brothers are alleged to be the masterminds behind the food stamp fraud, which involved setting up two small convenience stores along the Utah-Colorado border, and applying to get the stores licensed to accept SNAP cards. Church members then used their own SNAP cards to purchase food, which they donated to the church, or just ran their cards with nothing in exchange. These fake purchases and sham donations allowed the Jeffs to draw down actual money from SNAP, which prosecutors say they laundered through other companies owned by their church.
The indictment does not give an estimated total dollar value to the scam, but says the state will seek to recoup the full amount of all transactions tied to the alleged fraud, and the accused could face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
We often hear conservatives use eligibility fraud claims to justify support for cutting the budget of what in actuality the Center on Budget and Policy Priority describes as the most cost-effective anti-poverty programs. This conservative vision isn’t just wrong, because food stamp fraud is deeply rare and predominantly white-collar in nature. It is also wrong, because conservatives tend to portray the system as serving many people who do not deserve it, while in reality, food stamps are vastly under-enrolled. Millions of people who earn little enough to qualify for the program, do not apply for benefits at all.
And, in the case of Jeffs’, it’s organized crime on a large scale. Religious leaders meant to teach good codes of conduct, have instead enrolled members of their congregation in to committing large scale frauds. Luckily, the fraud is being investigated, and hopefully the recouped funds will reach the people needing them.
Featured image of Temple of the FLDS in El Dorado, Texas, by Randy Mankin. Available under Public Domain.
