Feds: Two Haitians Ran Food-stamp Fraud Operation. Trump Admin OK’d One of Them to Redeem Benefits

Federal prosecutors have charged two Haitians with robbing the taxpayers of almost $7 million in food stamps and stealing food donated for poor kids.

Facing one count of food-stamp fraud each are Antonio Bonheur, 74, and Saul Alisme, 21. Undercover agents nailed the two immigrants illegally redeeming food stamps from a storefront in Boston.

While the Biden administration enabled Bonheur’s theft, the Trump administration permitted Alisme to set up shop.

A special agent in the Agriculture Department’s inspector general’s office explained in a criminal complaint how the pair ripped off the taxpayers. The food stamp program is called SNAP — Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Recipients purchase goods with an electronic benefits card, or EBT.

The two defendants ran stores with a single storefront. The investigation revealed “multiple undercover transactions where SNAP Benefits were trafficked by Bonheur and Alisme for cash, liquor, and other items prohibited by the SNAP program.”

Criminal Complaint

A naturalized citizen, Bonheur, who ran the Jesula Variety Store, began accepting food stamps at his 150-square-foot store  in 2021. Despite its size, Bonheur was redeeming food stamps at a rate even supermarkets don’t see, the complaint alleges.

Redemptions generally stayed below $10,000 monthly through October 2023. That November, redemptions rocketed to more than $16,000, then more than doubled to $35,328 in December. From there, Bonjeur got greedy. Really greedy.

In March, 2024, he redeemed $154,214, a figure that increased to $529,439 that September. That was his biggest month last year. Total redeemed through November this year: $6,783,529.

Investigators surveilled the store and found myriad “large transactions,” but “people were leaving the stores sometimes with no merchandise or bags visible at all even after spending hundreds of dollars in SNAP EBT transactions.”

As well, USDA gumshoes “reviewed pole camera footage of the store’s entrance from May 6, 2025, for every transaction that day at JVS,” the complaint continues:

Not a single one of these transactions taking place on May 6, 2025, resulted in anyone being seen leaving the store with groceries or bags commensurate with a food purchase in the hundreds of dollars. A few customers were seen departing with 1 small plastic store bag in their hand.

And, again, Bonheur also exchanged food stamps for cash and booze, the complaint alleges.

Bonheur’s monthly redemptions vastly exceeded those of full-service grocery stores. Bonheur’s Jesula Variety Store was a “medium grocery store.” Despite that, the 100-square foot establishment’s food-stamp redemption outpaced real medium stores by more than 10 times, the complaint alleges:

The Average Monthly Redemption (AMR) — meaning the average total amount of SNAP benefits redeemed — for those comparable medium grocery stores was approximately $16,269.00 as of September 2025. By comparison, The AMR for JVS was approximately $298,380.00 with numerous months exceeding $300,000 in SNAP redemptions.

Compared to Bonheur, Alisme — who ran the 500-square-foot Saul Mache Mixe Store — was a rank amateur. He redeemed just $121,890 since the Trump administration imprudently OK’d his application. His top month was November, at $47,766.

A lawful permanent resident from Haiti, he applied for permission to receive SNAP benefits in February 2025, and began redeeming them in May. The complaint does explain how or why the Trump administration approved the application.

He took redeemed food stamps for cash, too, the complaint alleges:

On June 11, 2025, [the undercover operative] entered [his store] and purchased 1 bag of rice for $25 and 1 bag of cornmeal for $10. The [undercover operative] also trafficked $120 in USDA EBT SNAP Benefits in exchange for $100.00 in cash comprised of five $20 bills. ALISME processed the total transaction for an amount of $155.00

Stealing From Poor Kids

Worse still, the complaint alleges, the pair robbed and starved little kids by selling MannaPack meals, a food donation from an outfit called Feed My Starving Children. Charitable donors pay for the meals, which cannot be sold retail. The meals are intended for starving kids overseas. 

Bonheur and Alisme sold the MannaPacks for $8 apiece.

As the Justice Department summarized the case, “because both stores carried little legitimate food inventory and generated minimal lawful revenue, the defendants allegedly relied almost entirely on USDA-funded SNAP redemptions as their source of income. To conceal the nature and source of these funds, the defendants allegedly maintained numerous secondary bank accounts through which SNAP proceeds were transferred, withdrawn as cash and redeposited to create the appearance of legitimate business activity while obscuring the true source of funds.”

A conviction for food-stamp fraud exceeding $100 carries a five-year prison sentence and three years supervised probation.

Unhappily, Bonheur won’t likely lose his citizenship. Whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement will boot Alisme back where he belongs is unclear.

“These men abused one of the government’s most critical safety net programs for their own financial gain,” U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said:

This is taxpayer money meant to keep people from going hungry. These defendants decided to take it for themselves.