These brothers may have considered these welfare benefits to be their due, in lieu of the jizya that the Qur’an says that Muslims should collect from subjugated non-Muslim People of the Book (9:29). In Islamic law, it is the place of non-Muslims to turn over their funds to the Muslims.
“Brothers sentenced in $1.4M welfare-for-cash scheme at halal market,” by Judy Harrison and Seth Koenig, Bangor Daily News, June 18, 2018 (thanks to Richard):
The former owner of a Portland halal market who, with his brother, traded $1.4 million in federal food benefits for cash was sentenced Monday afternoon in U.S. District Court to three years in prison.
The federal prosecutor called the case “one of the largest, if not the largest, fraud cases involving [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] benefits in [Maine].”
Ali Ratib Daham, 41, of Westbrook, who originally owned Ahram Halal Market, 630 Forest Ave., pleaded guilty in November to one count each of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, money laundering and theft of government funds….
His brother, Abdulkareem Daham, 23, was sentenced Monday morning to two years in prison. He was convicted after a three-day jury trial in January of conspiracy to defraud the United States, according to court documents.
The older brother was ordered to pay $1.4 million in restitution, while the younger was ordered to pay up to $955,000, according to their attorneys. The restitution order states that the men are equally responsible for payments but the younger brother’s payments are capped.
Ali Daham already has paid $80,000 toward restitution, according to court documents….
In sentencing the older brother, U.S. District Court D. Brock Hornby, who himself is a naturalized citizen, said there were “no winners in a case like this.”
“By sentencing two brothers, I realize I’m creating great pain for this family,” he said. “I’m also creating great pain for the immigrant community, as many members have told me he was a great helper to them. Sadly, he was a helper to them by defrauding the government.”…
The Dahams are natives of Iraq. The family fled the country in the mid-2000s. They arrived in Portland in 2009 and opened the business two years later.
The elder brother said that he broke the law in an effort to help Portland’s immigrant community.
“I came from a country experiencing different wars,” Ali Daham said through a translator when it was his turn to address the court. “The human condition was different. People had to help each other. … What I did [here] was in the spirit of providing help for people in the community.”
But Assistant U.S. Attorney James Chapman argued that by running the welfare-for-cash fraud, Daham harmed those immigrants in need by fueling prejudice against his community and “providing ammunition to those who would seek to restrict welfare benefits.”
The evidence presented at the younger Daham’s trial showed that between June 2011 through April 2016, the brothers gave cash to customers at the market in exchange for benefits from the SNAP and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children plus a fee.
During that period, the market received more than $4 million in SNAP and WIC receipts, at least $1.4 million of which were obtained illegally, according to court documents….
Strangerinastrangeland says
Yes. He takes the food stamps for 50% paid in cash. Helping the community by taking food out of the mouths of children.
balam says
Rascally,Muslims might have a few qualities but HONESTY is certainly not one of them.Look at the Muslim countries. You simply can not beat them in corruption and prejudice
Dennis says
The first thing I did after arriving at the airport in Pakistan was to change some money. The punks (pukes) at the money kiosk shorted me and I caught them rejoicing behind my back as I walked away. A US embassy official happened to be nearly so I checked with him and he upbraided the poor little tykes who humbly and apologetically corrected their accounting error.
No Muzzies Here says
Just a creative way of collecting the jizya with the tacit approval of the corrupt American politicians who would never openly approve jizya.
SB says
Because they can. A weak, complimentary country like the U.S. always is.
Tim says
The same thing happened in a Beaverton, OR store in 2009
https://www.oregonlive.com/beaverton/index.ssf/2013/12/beaverton_market_at_center_of.html
HugoHackenbush says
And when can we expect stripping of citizenship (if naturalized) and deportation???
D’OH!!
Never mind. I withdraw the question.
Keys says
Hugo –
You could be jailed with Tommy Robinson for that question in the UK.
CogitoErgoSum says
I wonder what these brothers would have done if a poor infidel had gone into their market and helped himself to a few bags of groceries without paying. The Muslim thing to do would have been to cut his hand off. But no, these guys are good people. They are modern day Robin Hoods. Is there an Imam Tuck in the woods somewhere?
Chan says
Hi, if you watch my link that i gave http://www.vulture.com/2018/06/caliphate-new-york-times-podcast-review.html
You’ll see that toward the end the Jihadi remains unapologetic and his faith is even stronger. He spoke of his faith “clinically” (borrowed the word from the narrator from an earlier chapter). To an untrained person, his indignation is believable that the US bombed the nation of his faith so he had the duty to fight against the enemies. This tells me the idea of countering jihad is almost impossible because one needs the training level of Robert Spencer to understand that even a Jihadi with extremely strong faith can be misguided, that true jihad is an obligation independent of aggression from any enemy.
Chan says
Hi, if you watch my audio link I posted you’ll see that the Jihadi faith got stronger after he got back to Canada and became a “normal guy”. He stated that he has obligations to fight the enemy because they bombed his people. This tells me the fight against jihad is difficult because one needs the training level of Robert Spencer to understand that jihad is an obligation that’s independent of aggression from external forces. That even hard core jihadis can misunderstand the purpose and motivation of jihad.
tedh754 says
Does their allah teach them to be truthful and honest at all? And, if not, what kind of god is that to believe in?
James McNulty says
When in a state of war, which they are with us, lying and deceit are scriptural prescribed methods of helping to defeat the enemy (us).
infidel says
This is how they say THANKS for all the refugee services that the USA provided them in all good faith… THE MUSLIM WAY!!! LOOT THE KHAFIR and be a messiah to Ur own.. India has had its share of such Muslim looters… Fugitive Smuggler, Don Terrorist Dawood Ibrahim now holed up in Pak.. The late Haji Mastan who defrauded the Indian Govt and lavished the loot on his followers.. the list goes on….!! As long as the Khafir is looted bone dry lock stock and barrel.. IT IS SACRED DUTY.. VOW!!!
somehistory says
“Helping the community”? More like, helping themselves. How else could the older one pay back so much of it already?
they should have to pay what they stole plus double the amount. Otherwise, they are just giving back what they stole. They were taking the money from the government and a “fee” from the customers.
Send them back to iraq when their terms are up.
When guests come into a home, they have to obey house rules and respect the homeowners. These guys were allowed into the country and disrespected the homeowners and disobeyed the rules.
Joe says
The SNAP and WIC programs insure that poor families have food. By giving cash instead of food to those women, they were taking food from poor children. Most of those children are less than 7 years old, and these brothers were making sure that they went to bed hungry.
gravenimage says
Yes–I grew up on welfare and food stamps. Even then, there were those who’d sell their food stamps, usually for drugs. But that looks almost innocent compared to this…
penelope says
why only two years?? in any other country, especially muslim, they would be headless and should be now. they are thieves, lying, stealing is in the dna of muslims; put them away for good
why is it illegals get so many benefits they do not deserve???
Hugh Fitzgerald says
The government ought to be monitoring all halal markets, indeed all Muslim-owned businesses, for evidence of fraud. For too many Muslims it appears that the Infidel state, like Infidels themselves, is there to be fleeced. Some may regard it, as many have pointed out above, as proleptic Jizyah. I have been told about the amazing amounts of money now being made from every variety of welfare fraud by Muslim migrants, from receiving benefits while actually living abroad in their countries of origin, to the “borrowing” of wives and children when signing up for welfare benefits–this increases the size of subsidized apartments and of family allowances. Anything you can imagine in this line is now being done, all over Western Europe and here too. The problem of Muslim fraud is gigantic.
gravenimage says
+1
Hugh Fitzgerald says
From chilly Maine to southern Florida:
South Florida reached another fraud milestone for what the Justice Department called “the largest combined financial fraud loss for a food stamp trafficking takedown in history.”
That dubious new record, federal prosecutors claim, is $20 million and resulted in a dozen charged with doing the government dirty via food stamp fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
The 12 charged over four cases are Hasan Saleh, 59, Mohammed Alobaisi, 37, Reynold Francois, 38, Ihab Hassouna, 44, Mohammad Alteen, 33, Maria Jerdana, 36, Joe Ann Baker, 56, Yousef “Joe” Homedan Zahran, 60, Omar Hajje, 43, Jalal Hajyousef, 42, Andy Javier Herrera, 24, and father Javier Herrera, 49.
“In this instance, eight small convenience stores in South Florida committed a staggering amount of fraud in a relatively short amount of time,” said Karen Citizen-Wilcox, special agent in charge, U.S. Department of Agriculture-Office of the Inspector General, in a release. “These retailers created an illegal benefits exchange system that defrauded the American taxpayer and denied healthy foods to needy children and their families. The store owners who allegedly orchestrated this trafficking scheme pocketed millions in ‘fees’ which they charged for converting food assistance benefits into cash.”
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article176438086.html#storylink=cpy
Hugh Fitzgerald says
Here’s a story–merely the first that came up — there are so many — from 2010:
A French Muslim man (pictured) has been formally charged Wednesday for taking welfare benefits to which he wasn’t entitled only two months after French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux accused him of polygamy.
AFP – A French Muslim butcher at the centre of a firestorm over polygamy was charged on Wednesday with welfare fraud and his four companions will also face charges, a prosecutor said.
Lies Hebbadj, who runs a halal butcher shop in the western city of Nantes, made headlines after his wife was fined for driving in her full-face veil in April.
Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux had threatened to strip the Algerian-born man of his French passport after accusing him of polygamy, which is illegal in France.
Following a nearly two-month investigation, Hebbadj has been charged with welfare fraud and violating labour laws, Nantes prosecutor Xavier Ronsin told a news conference.
The 35-year-old was placed under judicial control, forced to hand in his passport and pay a 10,000 euro (12,000 dollar) bail before leaving the court house in a police van, hidden from journalists.
His four companions including his wife will be summoned to appear before a magistrate soon to also be formally charged with welfare fraud, said the prosecutor.
The charges stem from a number of alleged violations showing that Hebbadj cashed in on welfare benefits to which he was not entitled, the prosecutor said.
Two of his companions lived in Dubai for a year while continuing to receive welfare benefits worth 10,000 euros in France.
Hebbadj fathered 15 children and soon will have 17 with the women who received benefits over the past three years totaling 175,000 euros.
Many of the women and children lived under the same roof and Hebbadj used his companion’s debit cards to access funds from the social security payments, according to the prosecutor.
Hebbadj is also charged with hiring 13 foreigners and foreign students to work in his shop without proper visas, he added. The employees were paid below minimum wage.
Police stopped Hebbadj’s 31-year-old wife in Nantes on April 2 and fined her 22 euros (29 dollars) on the grounds that her niqab restricted her view so she could not drive safely.
The wife, Sandrine Mouleres, is to appear in court on June 28 to formally challenge the police fine.
There are two parts to the dismal tale. A Muslim with four wives defrauded the French government; two of the wives were receiving French benefits even though they were living in Dubai.
But more important is the cost — legally — of this man and his brood. This man has 15 children, with 2 more on the way. And he’s only in his 30sHis wives have received in three years a total of 175,000 Euros – close to 200,000 dollars — legally. But it remains an outrage. There ought to be a limit on the number of children for whom benefits will be paid. How about a maximum of three? And practicing polygamy should be grounds for cutting off all assistance. That might cut down on these Muslim families with 15, 17, 20 children, all paid for by the long-suffering Infidel taxpayers.
gravenimage says
Thanks for the Links, Hugh. This is *very* common.
somehistory says
The FBI caught murderers with a wire tap to catch a couple of pakistanies who were using their market for food stamp fraud back in the ’90’s. While listening to the couple discuss their “business” with those who were getting a cut of the money to fund terror, they heard the couple murder their daughter.
Fraud is big business in these places. And other crimes too. In the above, the guy was flying all over the country and out of the country, meeting with terrorists. But his daughter didn’t want to be moslim and was making friends at school, so they killed her.
granddaddy says
“By sentencing two brothers, I realize I’m creating great pain for this family,” he [Hornby] said.
That’s really thoughtful of him. I wonder if the judge would be so thoughtful if they had stolen $1.4M of his money. And then one of the attorneys says that it just supplies ammunition to “those who would seek to restrict welfare benefits.” Who do you suppose that is? Democrats? Republicans? Some amorphous “those” but not him (it’s a very backhanded kind of sympathy). And then during court 60 of their family and friends show up to beg leniency (after of course they have received $1.4M from the brothers). And one brother says that he came from “a country experiencing different wars.” That would be Iraq, of course. So it’s all very political. This whole trial is full of politics. And then there’s reparations: one brother was ordered to pay $1.4M, another to pay nearly one million, and another nearly a quarter million. Does anyone really believe this will ever be paid?
I know most people reading here already know this, but this (below) is what Muslims actually believe is true: (1) they are the best of people and all non-Muslims are below them (Quran 98:6), (2) theft is acceptable in war (Quran 8:69; and when are they not at war?), (3) they are allowed to kill those who don’t believe in Allah (Quran 9:5), and (4) they can lie whenever it is to their advantage to do so (Reliance of the Traveller, Permissible Lying, r8.2).
This is not simply a culture that accepts lying, murder, theft, and supremacy as good things. There are other cultures that believe such things. Not many, but they exist (see Dobu Island, for example, just so you know I’m not making this up).
So Islam is certainly not unique in this respect. The difference is that Islam is a culture that says such things are good in the eyes of God (the Creator of all things everywhere, so it applies to everyone), and that anyone who disagrees with them deserves to die (this, they say, God says is good also). That’s what makes them really unique. Further, they believe that the Quran is the final and ultimate and unassailable word of God and that anyone who disagrees with it is wrong. All this stuff can be found in the Quran. A Muslim who doesn’t do these things (stealing from the unbeliever, lying to the unbeliever, etc) or doesn’t believe these things are true, is not a good Muslim (and that could get him killed [4:89]).
So they can never change and still be a Muslim, you can never reason with them, and because of that, they can never be trusted, even by each other. In fact, the only way a Muslim can be trustworthy and honorable in the eyes of our Western culture is if he isn’t a Muslim.
So now we have an entire community of Muslims who, it appears, are complicit in the theft of a million four hundred thousand dollars in tax-payer funded food relief. They’re allowed to lie. They’re allowed to steal. Their god says so. And still some people (Westerners) sympathize with them. Where did this money go? It went somewhere. It doesn’t appear that anyone in authority bothered to look into it. And that’s probably because they don’t want to know.
There is only one thing said here that comes close to the truth: “The human condition was different.” I don’t think a Muslim is capable of understanding our culture, they just want to destroy it, use it. Would this have happened in a Muslim country? The Quran says:
Cut off (from the wrist joint) the (right) hand of the thief, male or female, as a recompense for that which they committed, a punishment by way of example from Allah. And Allah is All-Powerful, All-Wise.
Quran 5:38
That’s what they should get. It’s their law, not ours (Reliance of the Traveller, The Penalty for Theft, 014.1). But it will never happen. And that’s because they stole from non-Muslims (that would be us). And that’s because they’re better than us. So our victim Muslim is lying when he says,
“What I did [here] was in the spirit of providing help for people in the community.”
Implying that such a thing could happen in his home country. Maybe one Muslim somewhere might do it, knowing he would sacrifice a hand in the process. But a whole village of people? Never.
Why bother with these people? They should go back where they came from.
Giacomo Latta says
Multiple +1.
Harriet says
deport them
take every opportunity to deport them
gravenimage says
Yes.
Wellington says
Here’s a beautiful thought: No Muslims in Maine. Better yet, no Muslims in America. Ditto for Neo-Nazis, KKK members, Marxists, anarchists, et al.
Yes, America will tolerate those like Muslims and Neo-Nazis who are in the US but my main point remains, i.e., America would be better off without them.
At the very least, such losers need to be described as losers (and enemies of freedom). Got that down pat with the Neo-Nazis. Still working on the Muzzies.
CogitoErgoSum says
The neo-Nazis should either declare Hitler god or a messenger of some god and then proclaim themselves a religion and they’d have Maxine Waters cheering them on to refuse to serve blacks and Jews at their restaurants because they don’t like them. Oh wait, I think she’s already doing that.
mummymovie says
This shrewd Iraqi is sensing the opportunity that presents itself in taking the food stamps of the massive throngs of Somalis most likely, who have recently magnetized to and infested the state of Maine like a plague of locusts because of their generous, and easy-to-manipulate welfare programs, and who are pretty much all -nearly each and every one of them, in all likelihood- on food stamps for generations to come.
It is the business-savvy moslems like the Iraqis and Pakis who follow the hordes of their more primitive, uneducated, muslim-bretheren foot soldiers like Somalis and Sudanese who are brought over here by the taxpayer-funded “refugee” resettlement program and sprinkled around throughout our communities across the country; only to -rather than work for a living- then voluntarily self-relocate and flock like cockroaches to states that have generous welfare, medical and social programs that are more suitable to their agenda of jizya-sustained hijra and dhimmi-enabled civilization jihad.
Disgusting.
mummymovie says
Welfare / food stamp fraud: Yet another wondrous contribution, emblematic of muslim immigrants, to free societies who create programs to take care of their needy and downtrodden!
Diversity is our strength!
gravenimage says
Maine: Muslim brothers defrauded government of $1,400,000, distributed cash to Muslim community
………………..
Robbing the Infidel is always Halal.
abad says
Deport them back to Iraq.
They can rebuild their own country.
Just keep them out of the United States.
Rob Crawford says
Organized retail crime — in most cases like this involving Muslims, huge wads of cash flow overseas where they fund jihad. Which is an obligation for Muslims.
Carl Goldberg, PhD says
This is not just “robin-Hood economics, stealing from the rich to give to the poor., It is stealing from non-Moslems to give to Moslems. This is perfectly legal in Islam.
gravenimage says
Yes–all the way back to the “Prophet”. There is a even a Sura of the Qur’an titled “Booty”.