The 40-year-old former owner of a Helena-West Helena convenience store and his 27-year-old brother, who worked for him, were ordered Thursday to jointly repay the government $107,486.36 for allowing federal aid recipients to trade benefits for cash, in exchange for 40 percent of the total.
Khalid S.A. Alkarsh, the older brother who is known as Omar, was also ordered to spend a year and four months in federal prison, while Bakil Mohamed Alqirsh, who is known as Jay, was sentenced to three years' probation, beginning with 10 months of home detention with electronic monitoring. The men are brothers despite the different spellings of their last names, attorneys said.
They were the top two defendants in a Nov. 24, 2015, indictment accusing 24 people of conspiring to defraud the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides economic assistance for low-income individuals to purchase food. The other 22 people charged have pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of unauthorized use of the benefits or, in two cases, had their charges thrown out. Of those who have been sentenced, all have received probation and some are required to make restitution in amounts varying from $415 to $1,575.
The brothers pleaded guilty in January to the felony conspiracy charge, admitting that from January 2013 through December 2014, they allowed aid recipients to redeem their benefits for cash or ineligible items such as beer and cigarettes at the family's Stop and Shop store. Prosecutors said that when recipients redeemed benefits for cash by swiping their electronic benefit transfer cards, Alkarsh and Alqirsh would pay them about 60 percent of the transaction and keep the remaining 40 percent in the store's coffers. Only a small amount of food, if any, was purchased in the transactions.
Alkarsh owned and worked in the store, while Alqirsh worked as a cashier and a manager and lived with Alkarsh. Attorney Bill James of Little Rock, who represented both brothers, told U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker that Alqirsh didn't receive any direct financial benefit.
He also said that no harm could come to the community by allowing the younger brother to avoid prison and serve a probationary sentence, since the store no longer takes such payments.
In sentencing Alkarsh, Baker noted that he had to learn the details of how the system worked in order to carry out the fraud. She said the court also took notice of the fact that he kept 40 percent of the recipient's benefits.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Peters objected to a probation-only sentence for Alqirsh, emphasizing that Helena-West Helena "is an impoverished area," and that the benefits exist to help the poor.
"I can't stress how great the harm is to a community like Helena-West Helena," she said.
Peters also noted that the Stop and Shop "did handsomely," compared with other small stores in the area.
She said the benefits recipients primarily used the cash they got through the illegal arrangement to further their substance abuse problems, which only caused further damage.
Metro on 06/09/2017