By Nate Raymond
BOSTON, Feb 3 (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors in Massachusetts charged four people on Tuesday with using 115 stolen identities to fraudulently obtain over $1 million in food stamp and pandemic unemployment benefits, in a case stemming from a Trump administration crackdown on waste in government aid programs.
Prosecutors said the defendants used stolen identities to obtain Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits in Massachusetts and Rhode Island to buy chicken, beef, pork and other bulk food items for a defendant’s restaurant.
U.S. Attorney Leah Foley during a press conference in Boston said the scheme allowed them to fraudulently obtain $440,000 in benefits from the SNAP food aid program for low-income Americans from 2023 to 2025. Those benefits are administered by states.
Prosecutors said they further enriched themselves by over $700,000 by submitting fraudulent applications for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Nevada from 2020 to 2021.
Foley said the case stemmed from efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to pursue charges over the “extraordinary amount of benefit fraud we are seeing across the country” and is a “just a snapshot of the bigger picture.”
“It is no secret that there is rampant fraud across this nation,” Foley said.
The defendants include Raul Fernandez Vicioso, a naturalized U.S. citizen from the Dominican Republic who owned the Leominster, Massachusetts-based El Primo Restaurant. Court records show he has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy and fraud charges.
The other three are Joel Vicioso Fernandez, a green card holder from the Dominican Republic, and cousins Roman Vequiz Fernandez and Coralba Albarracin Siniva, two Venezuelans who previously held temporary protected status but no longer have lawful status.
They were arrested and charged with fraud-related offenses filed in federal court in Worcester, Massachusetts. A lawyer for Albarracin said she will plead not guilty. Other defense lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.
The case came after Foley in December charged two store owners in a $7 million SNAP benefits trafficking scheme in Massachusetts.
In doing so, she criticized Democratic-led states like Massachusetts for refusing to turn over data on SNAP recipients to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, including names and immigration status.
Massachusetts, which in the 2025 fiscal year received over $2.6 billion in SNAP benefits from USDA, has fought against the Trump administration’s threats to cut off SNAP funding to states that do not supply that information, which Democrats say could be used for immigration enforcement.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
Comments