The Black Informant | African American Commentary, News and Community Building

3 ex-wives of Muslim bakery founder allege elaborate welfare scam

Matthai Kuruvila, Chronicle Staff Writer

sfgate.com

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.

The alleged fraud scheme was aided by two employees of the Alameda County Social Services Agency who were also Bey’s sisters-in-law, the former wives testified. A welfare worker who was Bey’s sister-in-law once tipped off the bakery that it might become the target of a fraud investigation, according to the testimony. As a result, the bakery’s households jumped off the welfare rolls in an attempt to avoid scrutiny, a former wife testified.

The depositions and other evidence obtained by The Chronicle allege:

– Bey’s wives fraudulently obtained Aid to Families with Dependent Children payments and General Assistance monies that were then diverted into bakery coffers.

– Bey family members fraudulently collected Section 8 vouchers – designed to help the poor with rent payments – despite owning houses in the Bay Area.

– Bey’s children fraudulently received medical coverage through Medi-Cal, a program for the state’s neediest residents.

In all, roughly 100 women and many of the 46 children Bey is thought to have fathered were involved in the fraud scheme, according to the wives – a category, the depositions say, that included girls whom Bey allegedly raped and impregnated. (more…)

The funny thing about this is that while these folks have spent YEARS preaching against AMERIKKKA, they used welfare checks to fill the offering plates.

Here is some extra info about Mr. Bey:

Although the bakery was not affiliated with the Nation of Islam, Yusuf Bey’s activism originated with that group. After he came to Oakland in the early 1970s, Bey became a member of the 200-member Nation of Islam Mosque No. 26 in San Francisco, which had a strict fundamentalist reputation of strictly adhering to the edicts from the Nation’s Chicago headquarters. At that time Bey went by the name, Capt. Joseph X.[4]

Together with Bey’s brother, Minister Billy X, the two men received permission to establish a new congreagation, Mosque No. 26B, in Oakland. Around that time the two Bey brothers associated with a single young woman named Capt. Felicia X, who was the head of a training program for women in the San Francisco mosque. Felica X then defected to the brothers’ new Mosque No. 26B. Minister Henry Majied, the leader of Mosque No. 26, then retaliated with charges against Felicia X, sparking a bitter rivalry between the two mosques.[4]

Part of the rivalry stemmed from competition over selling of Muhammad Speaks newspapers on the streets. Bey’s group outsold the San Francisco group, but did it partly by selling to whites, violating the Nation’s written policy to not sell where whites might buy it. Minister Henry retaliated by ordering his members to confiscate any copies of the newspaper if they saw any of Bey’s group selling them downtown to whites. As a result, Elijah Muhammad expelled Minister Henry, for ordering Muslims to “attack” other Muslims.[4]

After 1972, the Beys and the bakery split off from Mosque No. 26B, and from the Nation of Islam. Bey’s brother, Minister Billy, returned to the Nation of Islam before the Million Man March in 1995. Currently, he remains active with the movement where he lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. (more…)

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