BY ALAN PYKE FEB 24, 2016 3:56 PM
Leaders of a radical Mormon offshoot group were arrested Tuesday for allegedly conspiring to defraud the food stamps program by charging off fictional purchases at stores the group owned.
The 11 men and women arrested are members of Warren Jeffs’ Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, including his brothers Lyle and Seth. The two 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 12 and 15 years old.
“This indictment is not about religion. This indictment is about fraud,” U.S. Attorney John Huber said Tuesday in announcing the charges.
The details of the case run counter to the image of food stamps fraud commonly tossed about in the media, in which undeserving individuals trick the government to let them sign up for benefits. Conservatives often use such eligibility fraud claims to justify support for cutting the budget of one of the nation’s most cost-effective anti-poverty programs.
The Jeffs set up two small convenience stores along the Utah-Colorado border and applied to get the stores licensed to accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cards. Church members then used their own SNAP cards to defraud taxpayers, either by purchasing food and donating it to the church or by running the cards “without the exchange of any food products,” the indictment says.
The alleged 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.
Read more
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2016/02/24/3753325/polygamist-food-stamp-fraud/
This blog will focus on political images I have found all around the Internet, though I will intersperse some commentary and quotes that I find interesting.
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