Last week in Texas, two men received sentences for food stamp fraud. Chief US District Court Judge Sidney Fitzwater passed sentence on Kamardeen Ogunleye and Robert Gordon. Both received 27 months in prison and were ordered to pay $1.9 million in restitution.
According to the Department of Justice, between March 2010 and September 2013, the owners of the KSO Dollar Mart in Dallas purchased food stamp benefits for fifty cents on the dollar and laundered the proceeds through their store. They defrauded taxpayers of over $2 million in benefits meant for the poor.
The Justice Department's statement implied that the fraud may have been one of the main sources of revenue for the KSO Dollar Mart. The statement said that the store "offered very few food and beverage items to its customers."
This comes on the heels of a bust of 54 individuals accused of defrauding the food stamp program of $18 million in Georgia using a similar tactic.
The food stamp program lost over $2 billion in fraud in 2012.
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