3 ex-wives of Muslim bakery founder allege elaborate welfare scam
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2009
Matthai Kuruvila, Chronicle Staff Writer
As the late Yusuf Bey built Your Black Muslim Bakery into an empire of wealth and influence, he also orchestrated a systematic welfare fraud scheme at his Oakland compound, three of his former wives have testified.
By the wives’ sworn account, Bey directed many of the 100 women whom he considered his wives to make fraudulent applications for government aid programs intended to assist poor families, then diverted the benefits to himself.
Bey’s alleged fraud scheme began in the 1970s and continued in some form until his death in 2003, according to the women, who gave depositions in a negligence lawsuit against Alameda County that was settled out of court earlier this year.
The allegations prompted an extensive investigation by county officials, but incomplete county records and the complicated nature of the alleged scheme were key reasons the investigation stalled, and no civil suit to recover money was filed, said Alameda County Counsel Richard E. Winnie. The revenue – thousands of dollars per month, perhaps more than $1 million over the course of the scheme, testimony in the case suggests – helped inflate the clout of Your Black Muslim Bakery, a business Bey proselytized as an icon of economic self-sufficiency.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/11/18/MNR4TCBIN.DTL