SNAP benefits fraud sends market owner to prison

43-year-old who tried to flee country also must pay $10.3M.

The owner of an Atlanta meat market who for years cheated the federal government’s food benefits program aimed at helping low-income families has been sentenced to more than five years in prison and ordered to pay $10.3 million in restitution.

Uttam Halder, 43, appeared before a federal judge in Atlanta on Wednesday, having pleaded guilty to single counts of conspiracy to defraud the federal government and failure to appear in court. In late 2022, Halder fled the country while on bond. He was apprehended about six months later trying to enter Turkey with a fake Mexican passport.

Halder, who owned and operated Big Daddy’s Discount Meats on Lee Street in southwest Atlanta, was sentenced to 68 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Michael L. Brown. The judge said Halder’s six-year scheme involving two other Atlanta grocery stores ultimately denied food to impoverished children.

“The real victims are the kids,” Brown said. “To bastardize a government program that’s intended to help needy people is a special kind of greed in my book.”

Halder of Decatur was a vendor in the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food benefits to low-income families. Beneficiaries use Electronic Benefit Transfer cards to redeem benefits for eligible food items. Cardholders cannot exchange their SNAP benefits for cash.

Halder loaned his EBT terminals to two other grocery store owners, in violation of the program’s rules. He knew those terminals were unlawfully used to give cash payments of about 50 cents on the dollar to cardholders, whose benefits were redeemed by the stores, prosecutors said.

The store owners split the profits. Prosecutors said Halder’s EBT terminals redeemed more than $12.5 million in SNAP benefits between 2015 and 2021, surpassing the average SNAP redemptions at comparable nearby meat markets by more than $10 million.

Halder told the judge he was “really sorry for being involved in this fraudulent activity.” He also apologized for fleeing while on bail in an effort to get to India to see his parents and take care of a family business.

Prosecutor Nathan Kitchens acknowledged that cash-seeking EBT cardholders were complicit in the scheme, but he said they were taken advantage of by Halder and his co-conspirators. “(The store owners) were essentially taking a 50% cut of those limited SNAP benefits,” Kitchens said. “Those (EBT cardholders) were denied the food that they needed.”

Paltu Roy, the owner of Big Brother Supermarket on Amal Drive in south Atlanta, was sentenced in April 2022 for his involvement in the fraud. Roy, a childhood friend of Halder’s, received a three-year prison sentence and ordered to pay $3 million in restitution after pleading guilty in December 2021 to a single conspiracy charge, records show.

Halder’s attorneys argued he should receive a sentence similar to Roy’s. They claimed Roy was the mastermind behind the scheme, in which Roy recruited his sons and girlfriend. Brown said it seemed “far more likely” Halder was “the idea guy.” The judge said Halder had abused the trust placed in him by the federal government as a SNAP vendor.

Halder also loaned an EBT terminal to an Atlanta business called Food World, prosecutors said. More than $11,000 in cash was seized from that grocery store and forfeited as part of the judgment against Halder, court records show.

Kitchens said there are more than 250,000 SNAP vendors nationwide, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture has “very limited resources” to police them. He said the program relies on an honor system.

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AJC FILE The owner of an Atlanta meat market loaned his EBT terminals to two other grocery stores in an effort to cheat the federal government’s food benefits program.