A federal court in Fort Worth sentenced a Liberian man to 20 years in prison for his role in a crime ring that defrauded the U.S. Department of Agriculture by emptying the accounts of thousands of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients in several different states.
In total, the group stole $2.6 million.
James Peabody pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Two co-conspirators, Saybah Keihn and Margretta Jabbeh, received nine- and ten-year prison sentences after they pleaded guilty to the same offence.
“The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is often the only way low-income Americans can afford to feed their families. I can only imagine the devastation these victims felt at the cash register when they attempted to pay for their groceries and discovered their accounts had been emptied,” said U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton, whose office prosecuted the case, in a press release. “These defendants callously preyed on the needy, disabled, and elderly. My heart breaks for them.”
According to court documents, Peabody conspired with Keihn, Jabbeh and others worked together to empty out the SNAP accounts of more than 3,000 victims in Texas and more than eight other states using stolen data and fake purchases at a handful of small African convenience stories in Tarrant County.
Their data was obtained by card skimmers, devices surreptitiously attached to point-of-sale credit card machines that capture and store data from cards as they’re swiped. SNAP benefits are paid out via electronic benefits transfer cards that look and function like credit cards.
“The object of the conspiracy was for [the defendants]…to obtain stolen SNAP debit card account numbers from coconspirators and then drain the account balances through EBTs by conducting transactions at SNAP-approved” locations operated by the defendants, according to the indictment.
Once the EBT cards were swiped in the card skimmers, the accounts were compromised. That stolen data was programmed onto new debit cards, transferring the SNAP benefit balances for each victim.
The group then opened and closed three grocery stores in suburban Fort Worth stripmalls in order to swipe those cards until each of the accounts had less than $10 worth of benefits remaining. The stores were Leelah’s African Food Store in Blue Mound, Saybah’s African Market in Bedford, and Afro Mart in North Richland Hills. The EBT swipe history shows multiple instances in which the same victim’s SNAP benefits were used at the three stores, prosecutors wrote in court documents.
“It also shows that EBT cards swiped at the named African Stores used victim information skimmed from the same batches, meaning that the swipes involved out-of-state victims whose accounts had been skimmed on a particular day or series of days in another state, most of whom resided within a few miles of one another and shared a common purchase location in their particular state of residence,” the indictment said.
Exactly who collected the SNAP data was not explained in the indictment. The North Texas U.S. Attorney’s Office didn’t respond to KERA News’ request for an interview.
In 2022, Congress passed a law that requires state agencies to replace up to two months-worth of SNAP benefits stolen by card skimming. According to USDA data, Texas has replaced $1.7 million SNAP benefits stolen from nearly 3,200 Texas households.
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission has information for people who believe their Lone Star Cards have been compromised.
SNAP, formerly called food stamps, has long helped alleviate hunger for the nation’s low-income families by helping more than 42 million people get nutritious food each month. Research has found major benefits linked to the program, from improved health and lower healthcare costs to better school performance and earnings.
More than 3.1 million Texans across 1.4 million households receive SNAP benefits. The state gets about $576 million in grocery-buying power from the federal program. Advocates say the program is under-utilized, though, as Texas has the second-highest rate of hunger and food insecurity in the nation.
An attorney for Peabody did not respond to KERA News’ request for comment.
Got a tip? Christopher Connelly is KERA's One Crisis Away Reporter, exploring life on the financial edge. Email Christopher at cconnelly@kera.org.You can follow Christopher on Twitter @hithisischris.
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