Explaining Relations with Cuba, Prisoners and Debt

Posted on June 9, 2015June 9, 2015 by Denise Simon

Repaying $15 billion in debt default:

The Cuban government has agreed that it owes $15 billion to the exclusive group of nations known as the Paris Club, after Cuba declared itself in default in 1986, according to a report from Reuters quoting diplomatic sources.

The figure agreed to includes principal, service charges, interest and fines that Cuba owes 16 Paris Club nations from its 1986 default, Reuters reported on Monday. However, it does not include compensation fees levied by the United States for private properties confiscated by the Cuban government since 1959.

The Paris Club is an informal group of creditor governments and institutions composed of 20 permanent member countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the United States.

The agreement reached with the Paris Club advances negotiations on the terms of payment, the first since negotiations failed in 2001, in part due to a $35 billion debt owed to the former Soviet Union, Cuba’s primary benefactor before its collapse in 1991. In July, President Vladimir Putin agreed to forgive nearly all of that debt and pledged to reinvest payments made by the Cuban government toward development projects on the island.

“This agreement is another sign of the political will of the Cuban government to rejoin a reasonable credit system at the normal level of the world economy, in accordance with the norms of international financial standards,” said José Oro, director of research division of Cuba at Thomas J. Herzfeld Advisors Inc. investment firm in Miami Beach. Read more here.

Criminal illegals that Cuba wont take back:

Havana won’t take them back

Hundreds with ‘Zadvydas cases’ refused by their home countries

Hundreds of Cuban criminals are released onto the streets of the U.S. every year because that nation won’t take them back — even though the Obama administration is trying to broker a more open relationship with the communist island nation.

It’s a quirk of immigration law known as “Zadvydas cases,” after a 2001 Supreme Court ruling that said the government cannot detain immigrants indefinitely if their home countries won’t take them back.

Cuba, China and Vietnam regularly top the list, but even some countries that are supposed to be closer partners, such as Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, are refusing to quickly accept some of their citizens whom the U.S. is trying to deport.

Cuba refused to take back 878 criminals last year and rejected nearly 400 through the first eight months of the current fiscal year, according to statistics that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement provided to the House Judiciary Committee. Vietnam is second, having refused 331 criminals in 2014, though it has rejected the return of only 44 criminals so far this year.

All told, the government released 2,457 criminals and 461 non-criminal illegal immigrants onto the streets last year because of the Zadvydas strictures, ICE said. This year, the totals through May 9 were 1,107 criminals and 344 noncriminals.

“The Zadvydas problem is an urgent one, considering that a large percentage of the most serious criminal alien releases are Zadvydas,” said Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies. “Given the obvious public safety risks, the administration should be more aggressive in seeking a solution or in using the tools available to them.”

In the Zadvydas ruling, the Supreme Court said immigration detention cannot extend beyond six months unless there is a compelling national security or public safety interest. If home countries won’t cooperate in taking back their citizens, the U.S. government must release them.

Republicans in Congress have proposed a number of fixes and have pushed for tools such as withholding visas from countries that refuse to accept their scofflaws, but the George W. Bush and Obama administrations have been reluctant to take those steps.

The issue is even more acute given that Cuba is the biggest offender and President Obama is trying to normalize relations with that nation. Analysts said it would be the perfect time to raise the issue of Zadvydas refusals.

The State Department didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment, but there is no indication that it has raised the issue as part of the talks.

Ms. Vaughan said that is a missed opportunity.

“It’s the best chance in decades to push Cuba to be more cooperative,” she said.

Beyond Cuba, the government faces problems returning citizens to a number of countries. Twelve nations refused the return of at least 70 of their citizens in 2014, including a number of countries that received generous U.S. aid.

One of those, Liberia, refused 85 criminals’ return, even as the U.S. was providing extensive help to combat an Ebola outbreak.

Three other Central American countries are poised to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in aid among them to try to stem a surge of their citizens entering the U.S. illegally for life in the shadows. Read more here.

Among them, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador refused 127 criminals and 145 noncriminals in 2014.

The Guatemalan and Honduran embassies didn’t respond to repeated messages requesting comment, but El Salvador’s embassy in Washington said it does what it can while guaranteeing that its citizens go through legal due process.

“We want to make clear that there’s no policy that allows refusing deportations. On the contrary, our consulates give assistance to all Salvadoran prisoners in the United States seeking to facilitate their return to the country, where many of them won’t be in prison,” said Ana Virginia Guardado, an embassy spokeswoman.

She said her country refused return in cases in which the individuals rejected El Salvador’s consular help. She said El Salvador is still working on those cases and that individuals will be given travel documents allowing their deportation once they have exhausted all of their legal avenues in the U.S.

She said El Salvador has worked to accept nearly 8,000 deportees so far this year.

ICE said the Central American countries provide good cooperation and that the relationships have grown stronger with the surge of illegal immigrant children in the U.S. that peaked last summer.

“Through relationship-building, consular pilot programs and regular engagement, timely issuance of travel documents has risen, as has the host governments’ willingness and capacity to accept an increased amount of ICE air charter flights,” spokeswoman Sarah Rodriguez said.

Ms. Rodriguez said the number of refusals from the Central American countries is low compared with the total number of deportations. El Salvador’s 2014 refusal rate was less than half of a percent of the total number who were accepted back.

She said the cases that are refused often have special circumstances that make them tougher to complete. Even after they are released, however, the Zadvydas cases are still in the system and ICE is still working to deport them as soon as possible.

Meet Bernard Aronson and Venezuela Blackouts

Posted on June 8, 2015June 8, 2015 by Denise Simon

Bernard Aronson, a Goldman Sachs insider with assignments in Latin America. It is especially cool that Barack Obama calls on Aronson to end the rebel fighting in Latin America. Or how about using Bernard to normalize Cuba with Hillary Clinton’s approval? John Kerry uses Aronson to handle matters with Columbia.

The intrigue begins. This is rather convoluted, so be patient as you read on.

Aronson has deep ties to Thomas Pritzker of Hyatt hotels fame same as Penny Pritzker who is Barack Obama’s Secretary of Commerce.

The Pritzker dynasty looks like this:

Family tree: Pritzker is the son of Jay Pritzker, founder of Hyatt Hotels Corporation.

Areas of interest:

nonprofits

College: Pritzker received a B.A. from Claremont Men’s College, and an MBA and J.D. from the University of Chicago.

Report: billionaires collect farm subsidies

Fifty billionaires were direct or indirect recipients of farm subsidies, according to a report by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group.

November 7, 2013

The Pritzker fortune and the Obama campaign

Tonight, President Obama will speak at a ceremony honoring this year’s winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, named for the family that built a fortune with the Hyatt Hotels chain.

Back to the intrigue and Bernard Aronson….

Bernard W. Aronson past relationships:

Jimmy Carter – speechwriter

Freedom House – trustee

Global Hyatt Corporation – director

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. – international adviser

Hyatt Hotels Corporation – director

Mariner Energy Inc. – director

Walter F. Mondale – speechwriter

U.S. Department of State – assistant secretary

Now Venezuela:

There were power black-outs in Venezuela? But why? Answer here.

Derwick Associates:

Defendants are U.S. residents who have amassed enormous fortunes through an illicit scheme to secure energy-industry contracts in Venezuela for their various U.S.-based companies, Derwick Associates USA LLC and Derwick Associates Corporation (together with these

companies’ predecessors, successors, assigns and affiliates, “Derwick

Associates” ). Known in the press as the “ChavezKids, ” “BoliBoys,”

and “the mafiosi of the Fifth Republic ,” Defendants Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt Lopez (“Betancourt”), Pedro Jose Trebbau Lopez (“Trebbau”), and Francisco D’Agostino Casado (“D’Agostino)

have profited wildly from their ongoing illegal bribery scheme designed to exploit for their personal financial gain the corrupt and anti-democratic Chavez regime.

+++

By: Dan Rosenau

Venezuela/U.S. energy sector scandal involving J.P. Morgan, ProEnergy Services (partially-owned by Obama appointee), Derwick AssociatesThe U.S. Department of the Treasury’s FINCEN recently announced that Banco Privada d’Andorra was favored by criminal enterprises from Russia, China, and Venezuela. In the case of Venezuela, government officials reportedly deposited more than $4Bn into personal accounts—most of it siphoned off from PDVSA, the state-owned oil company of Venezuela.

I’m painfully aware of the embezzlement and overbilling involving Venezuela’s energy sector given that, until recently, I was employed at Sedalia, Missouri-based ProEnergy Services. ProEnergy was the contractor responsible for the construction of one dozen power plants in deals involving gross overbilling, multiple offshore transactions, and a murky association with Derwick Associates, a Venezuelan start-up with zero experience in power plant construction. I’m making available here more than 10GB of material directly from the company hard drive. The metadata on each document can be traced directly to Pro-Energy’s computers. My hope is that “crowdsourcing” the enclosed data will allow interested parties to assist in exposing a multi-billion dollar fraud.

From 2009-2012 ProEnergy billed to the tune of $2Bn almost all of it flowing from a single client: Derwick Associates. Our company sold more than $1Bn in turbines (most of them used or refurbished–but sold as new) to Derwick which then resold them hours later at a significant mark-up to the government of Venezuela through entities such as their electricity ministry, their Guyanese state enterprise CVG, their state-owned oil company PDVSA, and the SIDOR iron-ore producer. In addition to turbine sales to Derwick, ProEnergy built the power plants that Derwick marketed as their own and for which both companies overbilled the Venezuelan government in the hundreds of millions of dollars. According to the Wall Street Journal, Derwick is now under criminal investigation by federal authorities and by local authorities in New York. (This prompted Derwick to immediately hire Adam Kauffmann, former head of the Manhattan DA investigation division. Kauffmann is already representing several Venezuelan government officials who embezzled hundreds of millions).

Working in ProEnergy’s sales department, I learned our company had hit paydirt when a group of connected Venezuelans chose to ignore Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) such as Rolls Royce, Pratt & Whitney, and General Electric and instead used ProEnergy as a middleman. In other words, a middleman used a middleman.

Inexplicably, the IT department at ProEnergy had blocked access to internet sites when I googled “Derwick” and “corruption.” This stirred my curiosity and so I explored the company’s shared computer drive for the term “Derwick.” What I found there shocked me: dozens of proposals to Derwick for generators, for power plants, for upgrades to those power plants. It was odd given that ProEnergy has never built a power plant in the United States (ProEnergy fails to meet American standards and so has offices in places like Angola, Argentina, Pakistan, and Venezuela). Shockingly, ProEnergy’s proposals reflected a mark-up ranging from 20-74%. In my industry, profit margin usually hovers between 2 and 5%. At these prices someone was being ripped off. ProEnergy was overbilling Derwick.

My sense of disbelief only grew the more I read. I discovered document drafts on Derwick letterhead. ProEnergy was writing the proposals and preparing the invoices that Derwick sent Venezuelan clients for the exact same equipment described in the proposals to Derwick from ProEnergy. This included actual invoices from Derwick to Venezuela’s state-owned enterprises like PDVSA. These invoices, the Microsoft Word documents indicated, were created on ProEnergy computers in Sedalia. On some of the Derwick invoices, the bank wiring instructions went to bank accounts belonging to ProEnergy. Some to offshore bank Davos International and others to JP Morgan in New York.

When I learned that the owners of Derwick were barely out of college and friendly with the son of the Electricity Minister of Venezuela I realized why ProEnergy had prepared the Derwick invoices: because our 20-something Venezuelan clients lacked the technical know-how. After all, how does a person draft an invoice for a product with no knowledge about the item in question?

Remarkably, these invoices prepared by ProEnergy and purportedly from Derwick also revealed mammoth markups over and above the prices that ProEnergy charged Derwick. So, an item like a set of three FT8 Swift Pac turbines bought by ProEnergy from Pratt and Whitney for $67.5M were sold one day later for $78M to Derwick who then sold it two days after that to Venezuela for $97.5 million. And so in four days an item with a retail cost of $67.5M had $30M added by ProEnergy and by Derwick Associates. In another instance three Rolls Royce Trent 60 turbines originally sourced for $66M from Rolls Royce were sold to Derwick for $79.3M, which in turn resold them hours later for $97.5M, adding another $31M profit to the bottom line of both Derwick and ProEnergy. Like these transactions there are scores of instances on every item imaginable—from spare parts to construction costs, from turbines to generators, from transformers to transportation costs and employee training. I stopped counting the total on the invoices after two billion dollars.

One colleague told me that the FBI had visited ProEnergy on several occasions. I was tortured, week after week, knowing that ProEnergy was robbing a nation where poverty and crime are rampant. I spent sleepless nights agonizing about what to do. Company-wide layoffs solved my immediate dilemma. The truth is that with no more Venezuelan cash flow, ProEnergy suffered a long-standing cash crunch. So much so that Washington, D.C.’s Acon Investments, made a capital injection into ProEnergy. Acon is run by Obama appointee to Latin America Bernard Aronson.

Months went by and I could not shake the disgust of what transpired. I blew the whistle by sharing the information with celebrated Venezuelan investigative reporter Cesar Batiz who verified the material and allowed a blogger to post some of it on Scribd.

The sensational revelations about money-laundering activities of Venezuelan energy officials at the Andorran bank would explain why Venezuelan state officials agreed to overpay Derwick and ProEnergy. The men addressed in the letters (written by ProEnergy and) and sent by Derwick are accountholders exposed to criminal charges in Spain for amassing illegal fortunes in “consulting fees.”

It is disheartening that American energy executives would display such appalling greed and be so quick to partake in the looting of Venezuela. My hope is that by going public with the 10GB of information more of my former colleagues will come forward and blow the whistle on one of the most troubling international scandals in Venezuelan (and Missouri) history. I’ve learned that Derwick Associates has persecuted numerous bloggers in Venezuela and abroad as well as mainstream journalists including having stories about their misdeeds “spiked” at the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Economist, Huffington Post, and the Miami Herald.

Then there is Davos and JP Morgan. Sheesh…ties that bind in covert actions.

Relying on the U.S. for an Iraq Strategy is Suicidal

Posted on June 8, 2015June 8, 2015 by Denise Simon

The US does not yet have a “complete strategy” for helping Iraq regain territory from Islamic State (IS), President Barack Obama has said.

He said the Pentagon was reviewing ways to help Iraq train and equip its forces.

Mr Obama also said a full commitment to the process was needed by the Iraqis themselves. Much more here.

Meanwhile, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are blaming the White House for the fall of Ramadi. ‘In May 2015, despite airstrikes by the U.S.-led international coalition, the Islamic State (ISIS) won another strategic victory when it captured the city of Al-Ramadi, the capital of Al-Anbar governorate, which is home to a Sunni majority. Articles in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which are both members of the anti-ISIS coalition, expressed fear and concern regarding the fall of Al-Ramadi and ISIS’s advance towards the Saudi and Jordanian borders.‘

‘Al-Quds Al-Arabi’: The Fall Of Al-Ramadi Has Proven That Continuing To Rely On The U.S. Is Suicidal and Former ‘Al-Sharq Al-Awsat’ Editor: U.S. Has Given Iran Free Reign In Iraq

Iran is taking over Assad’s fight in crucial parts of Syria

Iranian commanders overseeing the Assad regime’s fighting efforts on the frontlines south of Idlib have reportedly executed three Syrian army officers.

London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi said that the three officers were Sunnis who were among the regime troops that withdrew from the Mahmbel and Bsanqoul checkpoints following rebel advances in the southern Idlib province area on Saturday.

The three officers, who were also accompanied by several soldiers, were accused deserting their duty and “betraying the homeland,” the daily reported Sunday.

According to the report, none of the other Syrian officers or soldiers present at the time were able to prevent the execution as “officers responsible for military operations in the Jourin area are under the command of Iranian officers.”

A Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander told the paper that “the regime has handed over the operations room to Iranian officers and leadership.”

“The recent execution has caused a state of fear and terror among remaining regime troops,” the FSA commander added, saying he expected “more defections and more field executions.”

syria map

There are still Sunni soldiers and officers bearing arms in the ranks of the regime’s army who will receive humiliating treatment during the coming period.”

Activists in the Latakia region also spoke to the paper about the impact the Iranian takeover of the operations room has had on morale among regime troops.

“Morale is very low among regime soldiers; in fact, it has become non-existent since the Iranian officers took over the operations room,” according to an activist identifying himself as Abu Said.

“Syrian officers, among them Alawites, have become secondary members, whose tasks can sometimes be reduced to handing out tea and coffee.”

Iran Navy commander REUTERS/Fars News/Hamed JafarnejadIranian officers have imposed strict rule in the Syrian army, and morale is suffering.

Iranian command

The reported handover of power to Iranian officers follows the visit Revolutionary Guards Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani paid to the Jourin area in late

May, after which he announced that a “surprise” was in the works in Syria.

The Iraqi Kurdish Bas News outlet on Monday reported that major command changes have been conducted on the Latakia-Hama-Idlib front following Soleimani’s trip.

A Hama-based media activist said that the Syrian regime’s chief of operations in the area, General Jamal Younis, had been removed from his post and replaced by an Iranian general known only by his moniker Iffari, who set up his headquarters in Jourin.

Sarmad Khalil, an activist and member of the Hama Media Center, said in press statements that the IRGC’s military operations command is located in Hama Airbase.

Rebel-IRGC lines stretch from military checkpoints in the town of Maharda, north of Hama, through the towns of Helfaya, Tel al-Nasiriyah and Rohbet Khattab to Taybet al-Imam and the international highway connecting the Hama and Aleppo provinces, according to the activist.

The IRGC has also established a military base on Zein al-Abideen Mountain north of Hama city, Khalil said.

A top pro-Assad daily in Lebanon said last week that Iran has deployed troops into northwest Syria in preparation for a counterattack in Idlib.

“During the last [few] days, and through a joint Syrian-Iranian-Iraqi decision, more than 20,000 Iranian, Iraqi, and Lebanese fighters have poured into the area,” As-Safir reported in a dramatic article published Tuesday.

ISIS Islamic State Iraq Syria control Reuters

The report said that the new troops had been sent to the regime’s front lines in the northern Hama province village of Jourin and areas in the southern part of the Idlib province, which rebels seized last week following months of sweeping advances.

AFP later reported that thousands of Iraqi and Iranian fighters have been deployed to Syria in a bid to secure the capital and recapture the Idlib province’s Jisr al-Shughur, which lies on a highway leading into the regime’s coastal stronghold of Latakia.

NY Judge Rules Racism in Teacher Test

Posted on June 8, 2015June 8, 2015 by Denise Simon

Teachers get a real pass from a New York judge. They have a website too that offers them huge assistance to pass certifications. There is even a test framework and sample questions. So WHERE IS THE RACISM?

A federal judge in New York has struck down a test used by New York City to vet potential teachers, finding the test of knowledge illegally discriminated against racial minorities due to their lower scores.

At first glance, the city’s second Liberal Arts and Science Test (LAST-2) seems fairly innocuous. Unlike the unfair literacy tests of Jim Crow, LAST-2 (which was discontinued in 2012) was given to every teaching candidate in New York, and was simply a means to ensuring that ever teacher has a basic high school-level understanding of both the liberal arts and the sciences.

One sample question from the test asked prospective educators to identify the mathematical principle of a linear relationship when given four examples. Another asked them to read four passages from the Constitution and identify which illustrates the notion of checks and balances. In addition to factual recall, the test also checked basic academic skills, such as reading comprehension and the ability to read basic charts and graphs.

Nevertheless, this apparently neutral subject matter contained an insidious kernel of racism, because Hispanic and black applicants had a rate of passing that was respectively 54% and 75% the success rate of white candidates.

Once their higher failure rate was established, the burden shifted to New York to prove that LAST-2 measured skills that were essential for teachers and therefore was justified in having a racially unequal outcome. While it might seem obvious that possessing basic subject knowledge is a key skill for a teacher, District Judge Kimba Wood said the state hadn’t met that burden.

“Instead of beginning with ascertaining the job tasks of New York teachers, the two LAST examinations began with the premise that all New York teachers should be required to demonstrate an understanding of the liberal arts,” Wood wrote in her opinion, according to The New York Times.

Although LAST-2 hasn’t been used in New York in three years, the ruling will still have repercussions. Minorities who failed the exam (who number in the thousands) may be owed years of back pay totaling millions of dollars, and those who were relegated to substitute teaching jobs could be promoted to their own classrooms. In addition, while Wood’s ruling applies only to New York City, the test was used statewide, and it could serve as a precedent for further lawsuits.

The ruling could also pave the way for another ruling finding New York’s current teacher test, the Academic Literacy Skills Test (ALST), to be discriminatory as well. That test is even harder than LAST-2, with a strong focus on literacy skills such as writing and reading comprehension, and like LAST-2 shows a very large gap in scores between whites and minorities. A lawsuit, once again being heard by Wood, is already pending, with the plaintiffs arguing that there is no clear evidence strong literacy skills are essential for a teacher.

This teacher problem is not exclusive to New York, one cannot forget the scandal in Georgia. Over 3 dozen teachers were indicted in a cheating network.

Maybe parents need to re-think public education. The time is now.

Welfare Funding Jihad Terror

Posted on June 8, 2015June 8, 2015 by Denise Simon

Countries that are too generous with welfare and social programs dole out millions of dollars to people that filed fraudulent applications all without so much as any investigation or concern by agencies. Does anyone care outside of the taxpayers themselves? Where is the outrage?

Thousands of Brits have traveled to Iraq and Syria to join ISIS. Money for travel and weapons for the jihadis comes from tax dollars. Australia, a country that has the most fighters in ISIS has the same issue and has worked to stop some welfare payments.

On the American home front, it is no different. Islamic Relief Worldwide, the same charity connected to the mayor of Baltimore, continues to fund terrorism, so why would they be able to keep their IRS tax-exempt status?

Yet when it comes to entitlement programs in the United States funding jihad, the cases number in the thousands. A sting operation in Alabama called Operation T-bone found 17 suspects using EBT cards to send money to Yemen, where the Houthis, an Iranian militia has taken control of the country. In Minnesota, two Somalia men used their college grant money to travel to the Middle East to join militant groups.

One of the more well known terrorists, the Tsarnaev brothers, otherwise known as the Boston bombers did the same thing.

‘The family of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the two brothers accused in the Boston Marathon bomb attacks, received food stamps and welfare when the brothers were growing up, according to a letter from the state Department of Transitional Assistance that was obtained by the Globe.

In the letter, sent Thursday to the chairman of the House Post Audit and Oversight Committee, the department outlined the benefits that the brothers had received through their parents, Anzor and Zubeidat, as well as benefits Tamerlan Tsarnaev later received as a member of his wife’s household.

Anzor and Zubeidat received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, commonly known as food stamps, from October 2002 to November 2004, when Dzhokhar would have been about 8 to 10 years old and Tamerlan 15 to 17. The family also received them from August 2009 to December 2011, according to the letter.

Anzor was also a Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children grantee from January 2003 to March 2003, and again from August 2009 to June 2010.’

In 2014, there was yet another case of EBT fraud and synthetic marijuana in Davie, Florida where citizens themselves were the whistleblowers as the investigations found the money was going overseas to fund terrorism.

In Baltimore, 9 separate retailers and $7 million in food-stamp network has done the same thing.

The indictments allege that the defendants exchanged EBT benefits for cash, in violation of the food stamp program rules. The indictments allege that the defendants typically paid half the value of the EBT benefits in cash. To avoid detection, the defendants often debited the funds from the card in multiple transactions over a period of hours or days. As a result of unlawful cash transactions, the defendants obtained more than $6,898,000 in EBT deposits for transactions in which the stores did not provide food.

According to the indictments, the defendants listed below owned and/or operated stores in Baltimore that were authorized to accept SNAP. The defendants received instruction regarding the requirements and regulations of the food stamp program, including that only eligible food items could be exchanged for EBT benefits and that a retailer may never exchange EBT benefits for cash or non-food items.

Abdullah Aljaradi, age 51, of Baltimore: Second Obama Express and D&M Deli and Grocery, 901 Harlem Avenue, Suite A and B, respectively. From October 2010 through July 2013, Aljaradi allegedly obtained more than $2 million in payments for food sales that never occurred.
Dae Cho, age 66, and Hyung Cho, age 40, both of Catonsville: K&S Food Market, 3910 W. Belvedere Avenue. From November 2010 through July 2013, Dae Cho and her son Hyung Cho allegedly obtained more than $1.4 million in in payments for food sales that never occurred.
Abdo Mohamed Nagi, age 54, of Baltimore: New York Deli and Grocery 1207 West Baltimore Street. From February 2011 through May 2013, Nagi allegedly obtained more than $1.2 million in payments for food sales that never occurred.

None of this is new, cases were common going back to 2004, yet with ten years hence, why have this continued? The FBI and government agencies have the tools to track the fraud, money laundering and terror support structures. Where is the outrage?