Rock Hill trio organized elaborate $5M food stamp fraud, called SC's largest ever

COLUMBIA -- In what prosecutors said was the largest case of food stamp fraud in South Carolina history, a pair of Rock Hill immigrants who ran a $5 million scheme were sentenced to prison Wednesday. A third defendant was sentenced to probation.

The scheme cheated the federal government out of as much as $90,000 a month for years, prosecutors said. But the sentences, handed down in federal court in Columbia, were shortened because all three helped prosecute “poor people” who misused food stamps to buy gas, cigarettes and beer at a store that operated almost exclusively as a food stamp mill, prosecutors said.

The conspirators overcharged the food stamp program and kept the extra money, prosecutors said. Food stamp rules prohibit them from being used to buy nonfood items.

“This fraud is unparalleled in South Carolina,” said Jim May, assistant U.S. attorney. “It was astronomical how much fraud was going through this store.”

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