Four men, most of them owners of South Florida convenience stores, have been accused of a multi-million-dollar, years-long scheme to defraud the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, by exchanging food assistance benefits for cash, prosecutors said.
Rajaie Ahmad Ali, 63, of Miramar; Sami Jamhour, 43, of Hollywood; Cristian Giovanni Amaro, 27, of Miami; and Adel Amro, 23, of Fort Myers, are accused of conspiring to traffic SNAP benefits through authorized stores in Miami-Dade and Broward counties from 2019 to May of this year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Florida, said Thursday.
“Food stamps exist to help families put food on the table, not to make criminals rich,” U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones said. “As alleged, these defendants turned a neighborhood grocery store into a cash-for-food-stamps operation, trafficking more than $19 million in taxpayer-funded benefits for their own profit.”…