Two Boston men are accused of operating tiny, neighboring stores in the city which were reimbursed for SNAP benefits far beyond what would be reasonable for their size. The stores received SNAP reimbursements more typical of a large supermarket—with one of the shops once redeeming $500,000 in a single month, authorities say.
Authorities also accused the men of exchanging the SNAP reimbursements for cash on multiple occasions. The SNAP proceeds were transferred to secondary bank accounts and obscured as legitimate business income for the stores, authorities alleged.
The men were arrested Wednesday morning and each was charged with one count of food-stamp fraud following an investigation led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Leah Foley, U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, said at a press conference that the case exposed a “serious breakdown in oversight” and that officials would continue to investigate businesses in the state with anomalous receipts of federal benefits.
“The Trump administration has made it clear that it will not tolerate SNAP benefit fraud, and it will criminally prosecute those who are engaging in the fraud that was exposed in today’s criminal complaint,” Foley said.
Foley, who was appointed to the role this year, rebuked some states, including Massachusetts, for declining to comply with requests from the Trump administration for data on SNAP recipients to identify fraud.
The complaint said the men, both Haitian immigrants—one a U.S. citizen and the other a lawful permanent resident—also sold food products paid for by charity and intended to go toward needy children overseas
A lawyer for Antonio Bonheur, 74, declined to comment, while a representative for Saul Alisme, 21, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The charges come on the heels of a much larger fraud investigation in Minnesota that began under the Biden administration in 2022. In that case, federal prosecutors have charged dozens of residents of Somali descent with exploiting a federally funded child nutrition program during the Covid-19 pandemic. The extent of fraud involving SNAP is unclear. The program provides about $96 billion in assistance.
States, which administer the program on behalf of the federal government, reported more than $320 million in stolen SNAP benefits between October 2022 and December 2024, according to a federal report.
A report from the Massachusetts state auditor reported more than $1.2 million in fraudulently obtained SNAP benefits between October and December of 2024.
“We believe that the fraud is widespread,” Foley, the U.S. attorney, said Wednesday.
Some states like California are increasing efforts to modernize security protections on the electronic debit cards used by low-income people to get their SNAP benefits, which have been the targets of scammers.
Christopher Bosso, a professor of public policy and political science at Northeastern University in Boston who has studied SNAP, said the program is so large it’s bound to have some level of malfeasance, similar to other large government entities.
“A program this size, you’re going to have some amount of this,” he said, adding that SNAP recipients typically aren’t the ones exploiting the system.
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