Antonio Bonheur, 75, a US citizen of Haitian origin, ran a 150-square-foot Blue Hill Avenue storefront that prosecutors say functioned as a fraud mill — redeeming as much as half a million dollars a month in food-stamp benefits while stocking almost no food, and reselling donated meals meant for starving children abroad.
By Caribbean Television Network (CTN)
A Mattapan store owner was sentenced Wednesday to two years in federal prison for turning his tiny Blue Hill Avenue shop into the engine of a nearly $7 million food-stamp fraud scheme — one that prosecutors say drained a program meant for people experiencing poverty while he pocketed a share of the proceeds and even collected benefits for himself.
Antonio Bonheur, 75, of Mattapa, USA, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who ordered two years behind bars followed by two years of supervised release, according to the office of U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley. Bonheur was also ordered to pay a $1 million restitution judgment and to forfeit roughly $400,000 in funds seized during the investigation. He pleaded guilty in March 2026 to one count of food-stamp fraud and one count of wire fraud and had been arrested and charged the previous December.
At the center of the case is Jesula Variety Store, which Bonheur operated at 1549 Blue Hill Avenue in Mattapan, according to prosecutors and the Boston Globe. The storefront measured roughly 150 square feet — smaller than many bathrooms. It had a single cash register, no shopping carts, no baskets, no refrigerators or freezers, and, prosecutors said, only a token amount of food on its shelves.
Despite that, the store’s redemptions through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program were staggering. Foley’s office said monthly SNAP redemptions at Jesula regularly topped $100,000, frequently exceeded $300,000, and at times reached $500,000. By comparison, a full-service supermarket in the same part of the city redeems roughly $82,000 a month in SNAP benefits, prosecutors said.
The transaction patterns told the same story. According to the charging documents, only about 10 percent of the store’s SNAP transactions were under. In comparison,ile more than 70 percent exceeded $95 — the kind of activity typical of a large grocery store, not a cramped variety shop with bare shelves.
How the scheme worked
Prosecutors described a straightforward exchange dressed up to look like legitimate commerce. According to the Boston Globe’s account of the case, a customer receiving SNAP benefits might buy a $10 item. Still, Bonheur would charge the program hundreds of dollars for the transaction and hand the customer cash in return for using their account. Over four undercover operations, investigators said, benefits were traded for cash at the store, with Bonheur personally working the register each time. He also charged liquor purchases to the food-assistance program, which does not permit such sales.
The store, prosecutors said, carried so little genuine food inventory and produced so little lawful revenue that Bonheur relied almost entirely on SNAP redemptions for income. To disguise the source of the money, according to Foley’s office, he moved the proceeds through a web of secondary bank accounts — transferring funds, withdrawing them as cash, and redepositing them to create the appearance of ordinary business activity. In all, the scheme generated about $7 million in fraudulent redemptions, of which Bonheur kept roughly 20 percent.
One element of the case drew particular condemnation. Investigators said Bonheur also sold MannaPack meals — a food product manufactured by the nonprofit Feed My Starving Children, and paid for entirely through charitable donations, distributed to food-insecure children overseas. The meals are never authorized for retail sale. Bonheur sold them in his store for about $8 a package, profiting from food intended for humanitarian relief.
Collecting benefits while stealing them
Even as millions in SNAP money flowed through his store, Bonheur was himself issued a SNAP card by the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance, prosecutors said. To obtain the benefits — roughly $400 a month, according to the Boston Globe — he filed a claim with the state in which he made false statements about his income and assets, reporting no income at all. He then trafficked those benefits for cash through his own store while the larger scheme was underway.
Foley pointed to that detail as evidence of a broader breakdown in oversight. “The only thing moving across his counter in any meaningful volume was stolen taxpayer money,” she said in a statement. She added that Bonheur was “collecting SNAP benefits himself after state authorities accepted his claims of ‘poverty’ with little meaningful scrutiny,” describing a program “built on trust” that had been exploited.
Ted E. Docks, the FBI’s special agent in charge of the Boston division, said the case reflected “selfishness and unremitting greed,” and said Bonheur had set up “a tiny shop in Mattapan that was essentially nothing more than a front for massive fraud.”
The prosecution has been accompanied by a dispute over whether the fraud could have been stopped sooner. When the charges were announced in December, Foley faulted the state, saying the case was “not a sophisticated fraud scheme” and that “a lack of oversight was all that was needed to allow it to happen.”
Governor Maura Healey’s office responded at the time that it had flagged suspicious activity at Jesula to federal authorities more than a year earlier. “As a former Attorney General and now Governor, I will always support prosecution to the fullest extent of the law for anyone who engages in fraud or abuse of a federal program or any program,” Healey said.
The case is one of several that prompted Foley’s office to create, in March 2026, a Benefit and Voter Fraud T26 to investigate and prosecute the misuse of taxpayer-funded benefits across Massachusetts.
Court records indicate Bonheur, a native of Haiti and a U.S. naturalized citizen, shared his storefront with a second man, 21-year-old Saul Alisme, who was also charged in connection with the case.
According to CBS Boston, Alisme has pleaded not guilty. As with any criminal defendant who has not admitted guilt or been convicted, Alisme is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.
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Editorial Disclaimer: This article was originally written in English. The French and Haitian Creole versions are produced using AI translation, and errors are possible — the English version is authoritative. CTN also uses AI to convert text into audio. Readers and listeners should rely on the English text where any discrepancy arises.
