Bodega Owner and Worker Arrested in Food Stamp Fraud An owner and cashier at a Brooklyn bodega were arrested Thursday morning, accused of being involved in a long-running scheme in which they gave store customers cash in exchange for food stamps, according to court papers unsealed on Thursday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. Rosa Ortiz, a cashier at Glenwood Supermarket in Canarsie, and Enrique Calderon, the owner of the store, debited consumers" electronic benefits cards for an amount that supposedly represented the price of food purchased from the store, then typically gave the customers 70 percent of that amount in cash and pocketed the other 30 percent, according to court papers. Food typically did not change hands in these transactions, the prosecutors said. In 2011, the store processed more than $985,000 in food-stamp transactions, at least 20 times more than would be expected for a store of its size and nearly double the store's gross sales, prosecutors said. The arrests resulted from an 18-month undercover investigation by the federal Department of Agriculture, in which cooperating witnesses used audio and video surveillance. During an operation at the store, at 103-19 Glenwood Road, conducted in September 2010, a cooperating witness presented Ms. Ortiz with a benefits card and asked for $70 in cash. Ms. Ortiz agreed to give the cash and charged the benefits card $100. Similar undercover operations were conducted until the beginning of this year. The undercover witnesses left the store with cash in hand but seldom with food. The Department of Agriculture administers the food stamp program, in which pre-approved retailers may sell food in exchange for food stamps. The benefits are distributed to low-income recipients in New York through the use of electronic cards, which function in a manner similar to debit cards. Retailers have a computer terminal that can read the cards. For each transaction, the terminal prints a receipt reading, "Do Not Dispense Cash." The defendants face up to five years in prison if convicted. Ms. Ortiz, who the authorities said was an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic, was detained pending trial, prosecutors said. Mr. Calderon was released on a $50,000 bond.