An intellectually honest person cannot read the details behind this investigation and not see the potential for parallels to the Mississippi Jessica Lane Chambers murder, and Yemeni gas station owner/operator Ali Alsanai; aka Basem Alsanai, aka Ali Fadhel.
The First Stop gas station and convenience store, where Jessica Chambers was last seen alive on video, is owned/operated by a seemingly sketchy family originating from Yemen.
ALABAMA – A couple of steaks shoplifted at a Gardendale Walmart three months ago led to the biggest food stamp fraud investigation in Jefferson County’s history, and launched 11 simultaneous raids this morning at convenience stores countywide.
Led by the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office, teams of law enforcement officers met at 5 a.m. for a briefing and then fanned out across the county beginning at 6:50 a.m. The officers and agents were armed with 242 arrest warrants and plans to arrest 17 suspects.
All 17 suspects were in custody by mid-morning, and investigators already today have filed for forfeiture and condemnation of those 11 stores, which totals more than $1 million in assets.
[…] The massive probe, dubbed Operation T-bone, targeted those they say have been cheating the food stamp system to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars and sending at least some of the profits via wire transfer to Yemen.
[…] At the heart of the operation are Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards, a government-issued debit card that replaced food stamps. There are more than 900,000 people who get government assistance through the EBT card in Alabama each year, and they are allowed to use the cards for food, non-alcoholic beverages, and other basic needs, mostly through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
The investigation began in February when Gardendale police arrested a man for shoplifting steaks and some other items at Walmart in that city. When they interviewed the suspect, he said he was boosting the items to give to two convenience stores, and he named the stores, authorities said.
Investigators contacted Walmart’s Global Investigations Unit in an effort to let them know they would like to attempt to sell property represented to be stolen to those stores, but when they told Walmart the nature of their probe, they learned the conglomerate was already investigating those two convenience stores for EBT fraud. Simply put, they learned, the store owners and managers were using EBT cards that did not belong to them to buy goods in bulk to sell at their stores. (read more)
This Saturday night will be exactly six month’s since Jessica Chambers was brutally burned to death in Courtland Mississippi. Officials say, within a town of less than 600 people, they have no leads – her murder remains unsolved !
