An employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been charged with involvement in a $66 million fraud scheme that targeted the government’s SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) program. Five others are accused of helping mastermind what amounted to an inside job to steal tens of millions over about six years.
Government investigators said the “sprawling fraud and bribery scheme” involved an intricate and detailed process of getting access to government accounts to illegally initiate food assistance transactions and then capture the payments. A government release on the case describes it as “one of the largest food stamp frauds in U.S. history.”
U.S. Attorney Perry Carbone said, “This 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.”
Davis is accused of using her secure access to Electronic Benefit Card (EBT) data stored in government computers to sell hundreds of EBT license numbers that enabled “fraudulent SNAP redemptions.” The others in the scheme “used those license numbers to fraudulently obtain EBT terminals for stores that were not authorized by the USDA to process SNAP transactions.”
All the defendants are faced with several theft and misappropriation of funds charges, with potential maximum sentences on some as long as 20 years. The case is being prosecuted through the DOJ’s Southern District of New York.
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