reSee.it Video Transcript AI Summary
Neil Bonner and Saul Elisme for large scale SNAP benefit trafficking, a scheme that turned a program designed to feed families into a multimillion dollar criminal enterprise. Stat benefits are also known as food stamps. The defendants are charged with one count of food stamp fraud. As alleged in the charging documents, these men abused one of the government's most critical safety net programs for their own financial gain. This is a tack this is taxpayer money meant to keep people from going hungry.
These defendants decided to take it for themselves. These defendants exchanged SNAP benefits for cash, which they pocketed. Bonner, a national a national naturalized US citizen from Haiti, owned the Jesuela variety store. Elise May, a lawful permanent resident also from Haiti, owned the Saul Massey Mixe store. These two businesses were colocated within a single storefront in Boston.
To be certain, these were not supermarkets. They were not full service groceries. It would be a huge stretch to even call them convenience stores. In fact, the only thing convenient about these stores was how easy it was to commit SNAP benefit fraud. To put this in perspective, the Jasuela variety store is less than a 150 square feet in size, smaller than some bathrooms.
The Sao Mache Mixe store was approximately 500 square feet in space. By contrast, a supermarket can be 20,000 to 60,000 square feet in size, have a dozen or more registers, and employ numerous employees. Both the Disuela variety and Sao Mache Mixe stores had one register, no carriages, no handbaskets, and very little food for sale. One legitimate supermarket in the same area as these stores redeems approximately $80,000 in SNAP benefits per month. Over the last twenty months, the Jesuela store was redeeming between three and six times that amount monthly with nowhere near the space, inventory, customers, or infrastructure to support it.
The Sao Mache Mixe store redeemed over a $120,000 in SNAP benefits in the last six months. Simply put, there is no plausible way SNAP eligible food could have been purchased from these stores for this long. Yet these two stores are alleged to have illicitly trafficked nearly $7,000,000 in SNAP benefits. The fraud was shocking and glaring.