Who’s going to feed their children?
Via Island Packet:
Seven Rock Hill women who received food stamps pleaded guilty Thursday to more than $20,000 in food stamp fraud at a Rock Hill store. Three of the store owners now face up to five years in prison for a $5 million food stamp trafficking scheme.
All who pleaded guilty Thursday in state court in York have to pay the money back to avoid jail time and probation.
The seven who pleaded guilty Thursday are: Kimberly Johnson, 28, $2,195 in fraud; Victoria Sanders, 25, $2,234; Dequitta White, 31, $3,070; Jatonica Williams, 31, $5,238; Brooke Rogers, 27, $2,134; Shenisa Davis, 36, $2,549; and Labrecia White, 24, $2,962.
Johnson pleaded guilty by herself. The other six pled in two groups of three.
The women avoided years in prison on felony food stamp fraud charges by pleading guilty to misdemeanor fraud charges and accepting the requirement to pay the money back. Each defendant received a 30-day sentence in jail that was suspended, and two years probation that will be dismissed if all the money is repaid by Dec. 31.
Now the store owners face prison and potentially paying back as much as $5 million, said Mark McKinnon, 16th Circuit assistant public defender who represented three of the women who pleaded guilty Thursday.
The guilty pleas are the latest action in the state and federal crackdown on a scam involving cash payoffs for purchases of cigarettes, gas and beer. The scam was uncovered last year at the Daily Express mart in Rock Hill. The owners of the store, Li Fang Phu, Hoang Nguyen and Dianne Phu, all of Rock Hill, pleaded guilty in federal court last year to a scheme prosecutors said had been going on for years.