The manager of a Newark grocery store admitted Monday his role in a $3.49 million food stamp scheme in which benefits were illegally exchanged for cash.

Juan Perdomo pleaded guilty to one count of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program fraud, one count of engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from SNAP fraud and one count of aiding in the preparation of a materially false tax return, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

Perdomo, 60, of Newark, is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 8. His son Jose Perdomo, an employee of M & S Supermarket on Irvine Turner Boulevard, pleaded guilty in April to similar charges. Charges remain pending against Maria Rodriguez, who is listed as the store’s owner. She is Juan Perdomo’s wife and Jose Perdomo’s mother.

An undercover agent made 11 purchases at the market with Jose Perdomo and Juan Perdomo exchanging money for SNAP benefits, authorities said. The SNAP benefits for cash scam ran from about October 2015 to September 2018, prosecutors said.

During that time, Juan Perdomo made multiple cash withdrawals from an M & S bank account, officials said.

In an example of how the scam worked provided in charging documents, a SNAP recipient brought $5 in items to be checked out using a government-issued debit card. The store debited $75 from the customer’s EBT (electronic benefit transfer) account, which was was credited to M&R’s account. The store gave the person a portion of the overage in cash and kept the rest, authorities said.

When applying to the government to offer their customers SNAP payment, the grocers reported about $340,000 in annual retail sales, according to a criminal complaint. But from October 2015 to July 2018, the store reported more than $5.6 million from SNAP transactions.

Workers analyzing data for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service flagged the store after seeing an unusually high number of transactions of more than $50, which is uncommon in a small grocery store, the complaint said.

As an example, M&R redeemed just under $2.93 million in SNAP benefits between May 2017 to April 2018, authorities said. Two nearby grocery stores of similar size took in about $20,000 and about $60,000 in the same time period.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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