AUBURN, Maine — Christopher S. Frazer of Lewiston pleaded guilty Monday to welfare fraud and unlawful possession of scheduled drugs. He was sentenced to three years in jail, with all but six months suspended, for stealing $3,600 in benefits from Maine’s food stamp program.
Appearing in Androscoggin County Superior Court in denim shorts and a red, white and blue striped polo shirt, Frazer, 44, originally pleaded not guilty to the charges in February and changed his plea after reaching a sentencing deal with the attorney general’s office.
According to Assistant Attorney General Darcy Mitchell, Lewiston police contacted Frazer in February to talk to him as a possible witness to another crime. While in his Walnut Street apartment, police saw three EBT cards and asked Frazer about them.
According to Mitchell, Frazer told police he had purchased the cards from three different friends and was “using the cards as if they were his own.”
During a search of the apartment, police also noticed 186 prescription pills in the apartment. Frazer could not produce a prescription for the drugs and told police “he got them from a friend.”
Frazer, who apologized “to the people I may have hurt by this, especially my family and friends,” said he disputed some facts of the state’s case against him, but “I agree with the agreement,” he said, when Androscoggin County Superior Court Justice Robert Clifford asked Frazer if he understood the terms of the plea deal.
As part of the EBT trafficking “scheme,” Mitchell said food stamp recipients Shannon Drummond, Robert Baylor and Duane Thomas provided Frazer with their EBT cards and the assigned PINs in exchange for cash between January 2010 and March 2011.
“The only purpose and legitimate use of an EBT card is to provide basic food necessities to the qualified recipient,” Attorney General William Schneider stated in a press release following the sentencing. “Treating this taxpayer-funded benefit as something to be bought and sold for cash is illegal.”
“I’m sorry,” Frazer said, as two friends and family members watched from the courtroom gallery.
Frazer pleaded guilty to one count of Class C theft by deception, three counts of Class D misuse of identification and one count of unlawful possession of scheduled drugs. He was sentenced to three years in jail on the theft charge, with all but six months suspended, and two years of probation with the requirement that he pay restitution.
Frazer was also sentenced to six months on the charge of misuse of identification, to run concurrently with the theft sentence, and a $400 fine for the unlawful possession charge.
Frazer requested that his sentence be delayed and that he be allowed to report to jail on Oct. 19 to allow him time to take care of some ongoing health issues. The court granted him permission, and ordered him to start paying $3,600 restitution in $25 monthly payments starting in May 2013.
Had he be convicted at trial, Frazer could have faced up to 10 years in prison on the trafficking charge, up to five years in prison on the theft charge and a total of a year and a half in jail on the misuse charges.
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Slap on the hand! A slap in the face to all the hard working people who pay taxes!
Funny how whenever someone gets caught stealing few thousand welfare dollars, so many people are outraged at them and furious at how light their sentence is, but when corporate bosses get a slap on the wrist for illegally and unethically taking millions, these same people don’t raise a peep.
You are grasping Stevey poo…
Uh … no, I’m really not. Let’s be honest: my comment was very insightful. It raised a very important point.
Yours … not so much, although, your name-calling is cute.
I think when someone claims their comment is “very insightful”‘ it probably isn’t.
Except that it is ;)
No he’s right. I think the punishment is decent. Never would have happened before LePage
??? lePage had nothing to do with this. The police were the activists here.
So… you’re in favor of focusing heavily on the small fish and letting the big fish get away? I myself would like to see some or all of those big fish caught and punished, as well.
rich guys like Romeny take their money and hide it offshore to cheat the government.
poor people do it with food stamps.
they both deserve jail.
When that happens, I know no one who doesn’t
want to see those people punished to the hilt as well.
This is a very light sentence for what he has done. At $25/month, it will take quite a bit of time for him to pay off this debt. It has little to no deterrant effect on others to give such an easy sentence.
Soooo the police stumbled upon this while discussing an unrelated crime with this man. I’m wondering how many other cases of welfare fraud there are out there that are not being stumbled upon. I’d be willing to bet the numbers are scary…
I’m sure there are tons of head-in-the-sand libs out there that still think welfare fraud does not exist…
Maybe I’m a head-out-of-the-sand “lib” intead – but of course fraud exists! And the way a functioning society handles fraud is to police it. As happened in this case.
Why don’t you let the “libs” speak for themselves, and you speak for yourself?
Actually the way a financially viable society handles fraud is to develop countermeasures to prevent it. If this man did, in fact, purchase these EBT cards then somewhere along the line someone was recieving these benefits that did not need them. We need to prevent those who don’t absolutely need the benefits from getting them.
Good try though…. You’ve got sand in your hair….
We “libs” don’t have our heads in the sand. We’re well aware that welfare fraud exists and we’re just as upset about it as any reasonable person would be.
It’s just that unlike you, we don’t hate welfare when it’s properly used, so that hatred doesn’t spill over into a rabid desire to root out and and throw the book at each and every last cast of fraud in the entire state.
You, on the other hand, do have your head somewhere, but it isn’t in the sand.
Oh the hostility…. you libs are known for that though aren’t you?
How about being banned from ever receiving welfare again?
I don’t see anything in the article that shows he was receiving welfare in the first place. He was buying food stamp cards from other people. There is no indication that this guy qualified for, or was getting, food stamps himself.
Great idea, unfortunately, the EBT cards found weren’t his so banning him from the program will not make a difference.
He will probably get another EBT card and pay
with that.
Uhhh, he never had an EBT card of his own in the first place. He bought them from friends.
According to many on the left, this must be about the last welfare cheat in the state. So now the help can go to the elderly, disabled, and those that need short term help to get back on their feet. No more career welfare.
Uh, yes, that’s the general idea. Well done, you understand how welfare is meant to work. Here’s a cookie.
I love how anyone who isn’t a wingnut automatically becomes a member of “the left.”
It is obvious from the photo that the guy needed the extra money so that he could afford to have a neck implant.
ROTFL! Good one.
I was NOT wondering why he has “health problems’ at the first look!
I’m wondering if the 3 people who sold their EBT cards had children who were deprived of food. The reason the government started using EBT cards was to reduce the kind of fraud that occurred with the food stamp program. But it seems EBT cards are not the answer either.
So where are the 3 people that sold the cards??? Out getting their new one. Sounds like the cards paid for the pills.
This story must be false, according to democrats there is no welfare fraud in Maine.
No Democrat has ever claimed that.
But please, don’t let the fact that that’s a straw man stop you from attacking it.
Oh, they say it all the time. Stop being so silly.
No, they definitely don’t.
They only claim they make is that those who use welfare honestly and who genuinely need it are unfairly suspected of being lazy moochers, because whenever a story like this comes up, aspersions are cast on all welfare users, not just on those who commit fraud.
I hear you Chief, must be an error,/…LOL
“I’m sorry” Fraser said. Yup, sorry he got caught.
Exactly, he is not sorry for anything else.
Agreed. That smug picture says it all..
I get asked for my ID everytime I write a check and sometimes when I use my CC. In order to qualify with the paperwork for EBT cards, you have to be able to prove who you are through birth cert, SS cards, Driver’s license ect, so why not just ask for ID when using EBT cards???
Haven’t you heard…..You can’t ask for ID anymore. It’s not fair to the elderly or the poor. Oh wait…I’m elderly and I get asked for ID when I use my credit card??? HUH
I just know that you have to have the correct documents to prove ID to even get an EBT card, so I know those who get them, have the correct documents to walk into DMV and get a photo ID. As far as voter ID, I think if we are going to change that, it needs to be done at a later time in an non president election year…… many elderly and poor folks may not have the time/ access, or money to meet the more strict requirments at the DMV.
Voting is one of our most precious rights as American citizens. Yes, demanding an ID before allowing someone to vote is unfair to the elderly and the poor.
Voter fraud is virtually non-existant and ID requirements would disenfranchise millions of legal voters – and besides, these laws are only being put into place because the right wing wants to prevent poor and minority voters from casting a ballot.
So much for the barter system.
Quite….. you hear that? It’s a drop in the bucket. Now lets turn on the faucet!
No, they say there is no fraud!!!!
Just (4) more “isolated” instances.
Why sell the cards for cash? All they had to do was go to an ATM and withdraw the cash.
There are many loopholes that could be closed.
I am glad he will still be able to vote for Obama because this is a very important election. I know Mr.Frazer and if not for that George Bush lying, Mr. Frazer wouldn’t have done this, Bush and Cheney forced him to turn to this. Obama 2012
Ten-to-one he’s either a Republican who believes in Ayn Rand’s greed-is-good philosophy. Or that he doesn’t bother to vote.
So he could have been given 15 years and ended up with six months, what a country!
Ha ha, suckers! (By that I mean all of you taxpayers).
See what happens when you let to many White people live in Lewiston.
Ok, EBT for food only, no cash. Every single time you go to buy groceries with the EBT card only, you slide the card and an automated photo is taken, matched up with your receipt and sent to the state for them to check. If you DON’T use the funds on the card for the month, then obviously YOU don’t need food stamps so you are taken off the list for a year at least. No need to say it..I already know…there are not enough state workers to check all the photos and receipts. Just living in my own little fantasy land.