By CARL E. FEATHER - cfeather@starbeacon.com
Star Beacon
ASHTABULA —
Alfredo Camacho, owner of the Shining Star Grocery on West Avenue, was relieved when agents from the Ohio Department of Public Safety seized his Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) machine in May 2009.
Nowadays, food-stamp benefits are placed onto EBT cards.
On that day, Camacho was freed from the “prison” he had created for himself when he first agreed to do a “favor” for a customer: run a bogus food-stamps transaction through the machine, pocket half the money and pay out the balance in cash.
“It was just a downward spiral from there,” Camacho said Friday as he sat in his near-empty store at 3707 West Ave. “At times, there were enormous pressures or even intimidation. People would come either early in the morning, before I opened, or late at night to get me to open up.”
On Monday, Ashtabula County Common Pleas Court Judge Ronald Vettel sentenced Camacho to probation, forfeiture and restitution on two counts of illegal use of food stamps, or WIC Program benefits, under Ohio Revised Code, Section 3913.46.
Assistant county prosecutor Bruce Bennett said the statute allows prosecutors to aggregate all violations that occur in one year. The incidents occurred throughout 2008 and until May 2009, when Department of Public Safety agents zeroed in on the store’s illegal activities. Camacho, when confronted by the agents, admitted to the crimes.
The third-degree felony has a maximum sentence of five years in jail, but Camacho won’t be incarcerated. He will forfeit his store and home, spend five years under community supervision (probation) and pay back the $150,000 that he took from the program.
“If there is anything I will always do, it is confess to what I have done,” Camacho says.
Surviving
A native of New York City, Camacho was lured to Ashtabula in 2006 by his father, who mortgaged his home to help his son finance the convenience store. Alfredo cashed in his pension plan and 401(k) to complete the deal, which was valued at about $60,000. He opened his store, formerly DiCesare’s, in July 2007.
The friendly neighborhood candy store, rewarding Camacho’s investment one chocolate bar and soda at a time, did not materialize. Business was slow. Many of his customers had only food stamps, disbursed through the EBT cards, with which to make purchases. Reluctantly, Camacho agreed to get a terminal.
Sales doubled in a month.
“And just as quickly as the sales came about, so did the hands asking for the favors,” he says.
Camacho, himself caught up in the day-to-day survival economy of the West Avenue neighborhood, needed the cash just as much as those who offered their EBT cards. Debts were mounting; there was a girlfriend and son to care for, another child on the way.
He didn’t like what he was doing; he knew it was illegal. From his prior work in retailing, he knew the store was tossing up red flags: Camacho’s sales far exceeded his inventory. He knew he would get caught. Like an addict who keeps promising himself to stop after one more fix, Camacho kept granting “favors” so he could pay one more bill, survive in business one more day. The average transaction was $40.
“I tried to do the same as what the other stores are doing,” he says. “I did get folks from other stores come in here and say if I did not ‘loan’ as they do, they would get red-flagged, as well.”
If there was competition for the EBT business, Camacho didn’t experience it, however.
“One person would bring another. They would say, ‘This person can be trusted,’” Camacho says.
The cardholders came from all across the city, adjoining townships, Andover and Lake County. One customer brought a friend from Pennsylvania who needed a “favor.” They all had a sad story of an urgent need: gasoline to get to work, money to cover an emergency expense. Camacho wanted to believe them, but he knew better.
The $20 bill he’d slip a customer after processing the customer’s EBT card would be back in his cash drawer within minutes. The EBT cardholder would go down the street or around the corner and make a deal, and the dealer would pay for an order of snacks or tobacco with that same bill.
Camacho says he was amazed by the cyclical nature of the neighborhood economy as the money moved from the state to the EBT card, to his bank. Sometimes, EBT cardholders waited outside until Camacho had made enough cash sales to run an illegal transaction and pay out the “favor.”
“Where did the money go? Right back out to the street. It’s a big circle,” he says.
Equally amazing to Camacho is the degree of addiction in his neighborhood.
“I grew up in East New York,” Camacho says. “I did not see as many drugs there as there are in Ashtabula in the same square-foot area — right here in our neighborhood. Almost everybody who walks in this store is on some kind of drug.”
Likewise, most of them are getting their money from taxpayers.
“There are so many derelicts on public assistance, it’s a crying shame,” he says. “It’s a no-win situation.”
Relief
There was never a moment’s rest once Camacho started granting favors. The knock on the front window long after he had closed or in the early-morning hours, could mean only one thing.
“Easter Sunday, Christmas, Sundays — there was no rest,” Camacho says. “I have heard drug dealers say they sleep with their eyes open. Believe me, I felt the same way. I feared that somebody would come to my home and harm my family.”
He suspected agents were watching his store, perhaps preparing a sting. In an effort to toss up red flags to the state, Camacho began processing larger payments, but he couldn’t turn himself in.
“What person wants to turn himself in? It’s not an easy thing to do,” Camacho says.
In early 2009, Camacho resolved to stop the “favors” and run his store as he had originally envisioned it. He stocked the shelves with bread, and the coolers with soda pop and milk. He started selling DVDs. He refused to process fraudulent EBT payments.
“I was completely and totally abandoned by the community. Nobody would come,” he says. “The more I said ‘no,’ the further my sales dropped.”
“After two months, my bills had mounted up so bad, I had to start again. On the day the agents came, I was sitting in back of the counter, just praying for something to happen. That’s when the agents came, and that’s when life began to get better for me,” Camacho says.
Restitution
Bennett, the prosecutor in the case, said Camacho’s store sold $40,000 worth of merchandise in 2008 but had EBT transactions in excess of $117,000. In just the first five months of 2009, his EBT sales were 439 percent of his inventory. In our area, EBT sales typically range from 4 to 24 percent of sales, Bennett says.
To his credit, Camacho had no prior criminal record and admitted to his crimes and cooperated with authorities. Nevertheless, because of the amount of money involved, Bennett felt there should have been some prison time. Camacho says he did his time in 2008 and early 2009, when he was running the scheme.
“I committed the crime of fraud, but I paid the ultimate price by being a prisoner in our home and business for two years,” Camacho says.
After being raided, Camacho once again tried to run his store honestly but once again found customers reluctant to darken his door for anything but a favor. The bread on the shelves turned stale; the milk in the coolers went out of date.
“Through it all, we remained in the red,” he says.
Camacho and his family survived on sales of snacks and soda pop, $2,000 to $3,000 a month.
“I come from New York, and I did not see pop selling (in the quantity) there like it sells here,” he says.
Shining Star will close this weekend, but Camacho won’t be out of business. On Monday, he’ll open the Thijis and Thomas Candy store at 817 Lake Ave. The store is named after his two sons, ages 3 and 1, respectively.
Camacho can’t say how long it will take him to make restitution, but he says he is determined to pay it all back and to earn the money honestly, one piece of candy at a time.
“The first six months of this year, I have grossed $26,000 in this store. I can’t say how long it will take me, but the more successful we become, the quicker we’ll pay it off, and all the money will go back to the (food stamps) program,” he says.
