(sfchron) 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 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. The fraud began with a simple fact, according to the testimony: Bey forced his wives to keep his name off his children's birth certificates. That allowed his wives to hide Bey's income and qualify for public assistance. Bey, meanwhile, drove a Mercedes, and his business had lucrative contracts to sell baked goods in dozens of places, including Whole Foods, Andronico's, the Oakland Coliseum and Oakland International Airport.

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