You may have heard that the feds seized nearly $157,000 from the father-and-son pair who have been accused of running an elaborate food stamp fraud that involved 94 beneficiaries.
The U.S. government recently filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court in the Western District to keep the money it took from Raja Zaman and his son, Haroon “Harry” Zaman, who owns several Fort Smith convenience stores.
But did you know the Zamans are part of an ongoing criminal investigation by the FBI, the IRS and the U.S. Department of Agriculture?
If you recall, the feds also seized the family’s 2002 Dodge Ram, 2007 Acura and 2010 Acura and filed a civil suit to have the property forfeited.
Federal prosecutors asked in July that the civil case be put on hold for three months or until the “related criminal investigation is resolved,” whichever is sooner.
An attorney for Harry Zaman didn’t have a problem with the delay, and U.S. District Court Judge P.K. Holmes III agreed to it.
Zaman’s attorney, Rex Chronister of Fort Smith, didn’t immediately return a call for comment.
The Zamans’ three convenience stores in Fort Smith — Fenny’s, Park Mini Mart and a Valero — accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits as payment. (SNAP was previously known as the Food Stamp Program.)
In an interview with federal agents in January, Raja Zaman “admitted to helping ‘poor people’ that come in and ask to sell some of their SNAP benefits,” Lee Stovall, a special agent for the IRS Criminal Investigative Division, wrote in a report that was attached to the government’s lawsuit.
Zaman said he would pay people $60 for $100 worth of SNAP benefits. He then would use the SNAP cards at other stores to buy groceries, which would then be used as inventory in his convenience stores.
Haroon Zaman also “admitted to directing SNAP cardholders to purchase specified store product in exchange for cash” that equaled about half of the cost of the groceries, the report said.
The alleged scheme went on from July 2013 through May 2016, but the report didn’t reveal the total amount of money the scheme generated.