LaTasha Thomas, age 39, was sentenced in United States District Court to 12 months imprisonment followed by a year of supervised release for one count of mail fraud, and ordered to repay $325,159 in restitution to the United States Department of Agriculture, announced U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen.
Over the course of two years, Latasha Thomas conspired with her daughter Ambrosia Thomas, and other relative Cynthia Thomas, to defraud the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“SNAP”).
Their scheme focused on the unlawful acquisition of Electronic Benefit Transfer cards, which are issued by the state government to qualifying applicants and loaded monthly with money from SNAP. Legitimate applicants can use their EBT cards to purchase groceries and make ATM withdrawals.
Thomas and her co-conspirators devised a scheme to acquire cards under false pretenses and defraud the program. They created fake Minnesota temporary drivers’ licenses using false names, with each license picturing one of the Thomases. Then, they submitted these fake licenses to Hennepin County in applications for EBT cards. Believing their SNAP allotments could be increased if the purported recipients were confined to bedrest, the Thomases repeatedly claimed in their fraudulent applications to be women experiencing “high risk pregnancy.” They bolstered these claims with fake doctor’s notes they manufactured for the purpose of maximizing their theft of government funds.
In many of the scheme’s fraudulent applications, the Thomases directed the state to send the EBT cards to Cynthia Thomas’s apartment in Roseville. Cynthia lived there under the same false name—Sofia Gold—that appears on one of the scheme’s ill-begotten cards.
When law enforcement searched Cynthia’s apartment in Roseville, they encountered her there and found several pieces of mail addressed to pseudonyms used in the scheme. In the inside part of the apartment building’s mailbox—accessible only to building management and mail carriers—law enforcement found notes indicating that mail should be delivered to Cynthia’s apartment for several of the pseudonyms used in the scheme.
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The Thomases withdrew government funds from ATMs and used them to make purchases.
They also marketed and sold the use of the EBTs to others, arranging for their customers to pick up an EBT card, use an agreed-upon portion of its monthly allotment, return the card, and then pay the conspirators a fee (usually 50-60 percent) for the privilege. In all, through their scheme, the Thomases caused over $325,000 in losses to the SNAP program.
USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins has targeted fraud in the SNAP program, which helps feed about 41 million people monthly.
This case is the result of an investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Hennepin County Fraud Unit.
Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeanne Semivan prosecuted the case.
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