He Posted the Jets on Instagram

Vice President JD Vance and Attorney General Todd Blanche stood in the FBI's Cincinnati field office on Wednesday and announced the results of the Justice Department's first National USDA Benefits and Program Fraud Enforcement Surge. Between September 1 and October 21, the DOJ's Fraud Division, 13 U.S. Attorneys' Offices and the Utah Attorney General's Office took enforcement actions against more than 40 defendants — a seven-week run of indictments, complaints, pleas and sentencings aimed at people accused of stealing food assistance.

The scale, per Blanche: nearly $42 million in alleged fraud against SNAP alone, part of nearly $45 million in intended losses across SNAP and related programs. "Two-hundred twenty thousand Americans could've eaten for the entire month of October if it were not for this $42 million in fraud," Blanche said. Vance put the principle more simply: "SNAP exists to help hungry children eat."

The case the officials kept returning to belongs to Mercedes Reshard New, 39, of Atlanta — better known to his more than two million Instagram followers as Shawty Dred. A federal grand jury indicted New on October 7 on 46 counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of aggravated identity theft, and one count each of SNAP fraud and illegal transactions with access devices. Prosecutors allege that EBT debit cards were used to siphon approximately $4 million out of more than 350 benefit accounts, that phone numbers tied to New called the benefits system almost 9,000 times, and that his company, Shawty Dred LLC, was itself a SNAP-authorized retailer. He was arrested on October 13.

What made the case, according to the vice president, was the defendant's content strategy. The Justice Department's release describes posts to New's Instagram account depicting him flying on private jets, posing with ultra-luxury Rolls-Royce and Maybach vehicles, and handling massive stacks of cash. "Part of what helped us identify Shawty Dred is the guy's posting Instagram videos," Vance said, "and we're able to connect the money that he's making with the money that he's then using to go and buy seats on private jets and all these other things." The follow-up wrote itself: "It does not exist to provide private jets to a guy like Shawty Dred."

The largest single case in the surge involved no flexing at all. In the Southern District of Ohio, Chicago food store operators Jorag Yaseen and Rami Kanaan were indicted for allegedly processing thousands of EBT transactions between February 2024 and April 2025 using stolen Ohio and other-state account information — transactions dressed up as food purchases where, prosecutors say, no bona fide sales ever occurred. The alleged loss: approximately $29.7 million, some of it allegedly spent on automobiles bought for shipment overseas. Both men were arrested in Chicago on Wednesday morning and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Every one of these defendants is presumed innocent, and the government still has to prove each charge in court. That is the legal record. The other record — the one with the jets, the Rolls-Royces and the stacks of cash, posted publicly, in high definition, by the accused — was already in evidence before anyone thought to subpoena it.

The underlying reporting is filed in the Evidence Locker: U.S. Department of Justice (Oct 21, 2026); U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of Georgia (Oct 21, 2026); New York Post (Oct 21, 2026); Cincinnati Enquirer (Oct 21, 2026); Washington Examiner (Oct 21, 2026).