Guam – A store owner and manager are being accused of swindling the federal government out of $490,000 in Food stamp benefits.
Singeo Singenes and Innocencia Esirom are accussed of wire fraud and unauthorized use of food stamp benefits from March 2011 to September 2013 by allowing SNAP recipients to pay off their S&I Mart store credit accounts with SNAP funding.
Court documents state that the defendants would charge SNAP recipients who purchased merchandise on credit with higher prices for those merchandose and charge them a late fee if they failed to pay their credit balances at the beginning of the following month. They are also accused of keeping card holder information to scam the government out of more money. The complaint states they used old receipts, EBT cards and PINS to process fraudulent EBT transactions. To conceal their scheme, court documents state that multiple EBT Transactions would be made within minutes from the actual card holder’s transaction.
