State and city police raided a coffee shop in the 300 block of N. Eutaw St. yesterday and arrested the owners on welfare fraud charges and three others on drug-related charges.
Search-and-seizure warrants executed on the Eutaw Coffee Shop came after a three-month joint undercover investigation by both police agencies and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Tfc. David Hammel of the state police identified the coffee shop owners as Baban Nguyen, 42, "Mammasan" Nguyen, 50, and Dung Phoun Nguyen, 20, all of whom live on the premises.
They were charged with unauthorized use of the electronic Independence Card, a welfare card issued by the state Department of Human Resources.
Trooper Hammel said the investigation began after the coffee shop was identified as a popular place for buyers and sellers of drugs used to enhance the effects of methadone, a synthetic drug used as a substitute for heroin.
Those drugs include clonopin, alprozolam and Dilaudid, investigators said.
In the operation, welfare recipients would take their cards to the shop, be paid in cash at a rate of 40 percent to 60 percent of the available credit line and turn over the cards, he said. The Independence Cards, which can be used only to purchase food, then were taken to the Bel Air Convenience and Ice Cream store in the 3300 block of Belair Road where there was a machine to process them, police said.
The men who took the cards there received the rest of the money on the card's credit line in cash, police said. The convenience store then would bill the full credit line amount as food purchases, police said, and the cards eventually would be returned to the welfare recipients.
Trooper Hammel said the convenience store also was raided yesterday. No arrests were made there but authorities confiscated documents and receipts that detailed cash transactions and seized the machine used to process them, he said.
In most cases, the trooper said, the welfare recipients would take the cash they received from the coffee shop to buy drugs being sold in and outside the shop.
Trooper Hammel and Tfc. Thomas McElroy made numerous undercover purchases of drugs during the investigation.
Agent Douglas Wolfe, of the inspector general's office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and city police officer Wayne Early concentrated on the welfare fraud operation, they said.
Police arrested and charged these individuals with drug violations: Barbara Ann Duvall, 30, of the 200 block of S. Monroe St., Baltimore; Allen Thomas Fisher, 33, of the 200 block of Crain Court, Glen Burnie; Maurice Elmer Caroll, 42, of the 700 block of Streeper St., Baltimore.
Police were looking for eight others named in warrants accusing them of drug violations; all are listed as having Baltimore addresses.