A man who confessed to scamming thousands of individuals in relation to food stamps has been given a 20-year sentence in prison.
In August, 34-year-old James Peabody pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. On Tuesday, he received his punishment.
The SNAP program is for household needs designed for low-income families. It utilizes federal money to subsidize food and housing. Normally, those that are in the program use electronic benefit transfer, or EBT, cards to buy items and food for their household.
“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,” stated US Attorney Leigha Simonton.
Two other people identified, 48-year-old Saybah Keihn and 43-year-old Margretta Jabbeh, were said to be involved in the operation. They have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, as well.
Peabody, Keihn, and Jabbeh owned multiple African food stores and had SNAP merchant privileges, officials noted.
They utilized EBT cards that were coded with stolen SNAP account details. That information had been unlawfully received by installing “skimming” machines at point-of-sale terminals in stores throughout the nation.
On Tuesday, several victims of the scheme testified at the sentence hearing. One of them stated that she wound up having to eat out of garbage cans. Another victim expressed gratitude to the FBI for “investigating my case when no one else seemed to care.”
Keihn was given a 108-month prison sentence, and Jabbeh’s punishment was 129 months in prison.
The investigation was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Dallas Field Office- Fort Worth Resident Agency, and the USDA Office of Inspector General. In addition to that, they were assisted by police departments in Bedford, Blue Mound, Euless, and North Richland Hills.
