Meat market owner fled US over $10M food stamp fraud, feds say. Now, he’s sentenced
An Atlanta meat market owner tried defrauding the U.S. government in a $10 million food stamp scheme, then fled the country to avoid prosecution, federal officials said.
Uttam Halder, who owned Big Daddy’s Discount Meat — a now permanently closed butcher shop — was arrested in January 2021 and released on a $10,000 unsecured bond, court records show. Then he left the U.S. for Mexico in late 2022 in violation of his release conditions, according to prosecutors.
As a fugitive, his whereabouts were unknown until authorities in Turkey caught him trying to enter Istanbul with a fake Mexican passport in June, prosecutors said.
Now, Halder, a 43-year-old Decatur resident, has been sentenced to five years and eight months in prison after he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of failure to appear, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia announced in a March 19 news release.
He must also pay $10,340,986 in restitution, according to prosecutors, who said he pleaded guilty on Sept. 19.
Halder was involved in a yearslong scheme in which Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits were purchased from low-income families, who relied on the program for food, so the benefits could be illegally redeemed, according to prosecutors. The program used to be called the Food Stamp Program.
At his sentencing, Halder told U.S. District Judge Michael L. Brown that he was “really sorry for being involved in this fraudulent activity,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan said in a statement that Halder was trusted to “safeguard precious SNAP funds designed to alleviate hunger but he abused that trust to fuel his greed.”
How the food stamp scheme worked
Lower-income families receive benefits from SNAP to buy groceries “so they can afford the nutritious food essential to health and well-being,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the agency in charge of the program.
SNAP participants can buy food with the benefits by using an Electronic Benefits Transfer card. These benefits “may not be purchased or sold in exchange for cash,” prosecutors said.
In 2014, Halder’s shop became a SNAP authorized retail store, according to prosecutors. As a program vendor, his meat market had Electronic Benefits Transfer terminals.
EBT terminals can’t be loaned to other stores, but Halder ignored this SNAP rule and loaned them to two other shops: Food World and Big Brother Mini Supermarket, according to prosecutors.
The owners of those stores “agreed to share profits with Halder from Big Daddy’s terminals used illegally at those stores,” prosecutors said.
Halder knew the stores were paying SNAP recipients in cash in exchange for “redeeming their SNAP benefits at the rate of roughly 50 cents on the dollar,” according to prosecutors.
For about six years, EBT terminals belonging to Big Daddy’s Discount Meats raked in more than $12.5 million in SNAP benefits, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
In comparison, other meat markets in the area collected $10 million less in SNAP benefits on average during the same time period, the sentencing memo says.
Halder “shared a substantial portion of the profits,” prosecutors said.
One of Halder’s attorneys, Howard J. Weintraub, argued Halder didn’t benefit from the scheme because his portion of the profits went toward supporting his parents and three siblings in India, according to a sentencing memo submitted by Weintraub.
Meanwhile, prosecutors argued that “the true toll of (Halder’s) fraud is measured by the incalculable harm caused to needy families trying to make ends meet who sold their SNAP benefits for a fraction of their value.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan P. Kitchens said those who sold their SNAP benefits for cash had a role in the fraud, but Halder and the other store owners ultimately took advantage of them, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
“(The store owners) were essentially taking a 50% cut of those limited SNAP benefits,” Kitchens said, the newspaper reported. “Those (EBT cardholders) were denied the food that they needed.”
One of Halder’s co-conspirators, Paltu Roy, the owner of Big Brother Mini Supermarket, was sentenced to three years and one month in prison in April 2022, according to prosecutors.
Kalpin Shah, another defense attorney representing Halder, told McClatchy News in a statement on March 22 that “although Mr. Halder benefited from the fraud Paltu Roy committed using his terminals, Halder did not learn about it until later.”
“Halder continued to ensure with his employees that every single transaction at his own store was for the proper purpose intended.”
Roy, a 51-year-old Stone Mountain resident, had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was ordered to pay $3,071,235 in restitution, prosecutors said.
The owner of Food World, where Halder’s EBT terminals were also used, wasn’t named by prosecutors.
McClatchy News reached out to Roy’s attorney and Food World for comment on March 21 but did not receive an immediate response.
“Despite Halder’s attempt to flee, the coordinated response from multiple agencies and foreign law enforcement returned him to the United States to face justice for his crimes,” Buchanan said in a statement.
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