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Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| "looking for rats, thousands of ants got by" |
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| jaihoon |
| 08/12/02 at 05:13:38 |
| Small Scams Probed for Terror Ties Muslim, Arab Stores Monitored as Part of Post-Sept. 11 Inquiry By John Mintz and Douglas Farah Washington Post Staff Writers Monday, August 12, 2002; Page A01 Authorities are quietly investigating more than 500 Muslim and Arab small businesses across the United States to determine whether they are dispatching money raised through criminal activity in the United States to terrorist groups overseas. The investigation into Arab businesses, many of them convenience stores, is part of a sprawling inquiry launched after Sept. 11, when law enforcement agents dramatically stepped up scrutiny of small-scale scams that they think are generating tens of millions of dollars a year for militant groups, federal officials said. The criminal activity includes skimming the profits of drug sales, stealing and reselling baby formula, illegally redeeming huge quantities of grocery coupons, collecting fraudulent welfare payments, swiping credit card numbers and hawking unlicensed T-shirts. Some of the criminal rings have operated in this country for decades. But until recently, law enforcement agencies paid only scant attention to the schemes because they are difficult to crack and time-consuming to prosecute. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, however, they have deployed hundreds of investigators to pursue the plots. A number of law enforcement task forces involved in the crackdown are searching for similarities in the convenience stores' financial practices and money transfer methods to determine whether their activities are centrally directed. As part of the overall effort, a U.S. Customs Service supercomputer program has been diverted from analyzing the flow of drug money to tracking terror funds. That effort has led to raids on Pakistani operators of jewelry kiosks in seven states, authorities said. "It wasn't until after September 11th that we understood the magnitude of the [terrorist] fundraising from our own shores," said John Forbes, a former U.S. Customs Service official who directed a financial crimes task force in New York. "We were always looking to catch the big rats" in terror financing, he added. "But in looking for rats, thousands of ants got by." Investigators suspect that some of the money has gone to Palestinian groups that use suicide bombings to kill Israeli civilians, including the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, federal officials said. Senior U.S. officials said they are concerned that the inquiry might be seen as ethnic profiling but are simply going where leads take them. "The fact is that al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas are Middle Eastern groups that are financed from the Middle East, and groups here send money back to the Middle East. So of course we have to look at them," a senior official said. Arab and Muslim civil rights activists said they were unaware that officials had launched a large and coordinated investigation into small businesses in their communities. "It wouldn't surprise me that authorities are singling out Arab and Muslim businesses for scrutiny, given the presumption of guilt we've confronted from government since September 11th," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights group. Making Connections Twenty agents barged into the Hollywood, Fla., home of Ali Al-Madi at 6:15 a.m. a few weeks ago. Al-Madi's attorney, David Vinikoor, said the government has no evidence that his client has links to terrorism. Al-Madi, who owns two mini-marts in the area, had been arrested by state officials in a sting last October on charges of dealing in stolen cigarettes and pharmaceuticals. He was arrested again early on July 31 by the South Florida Joint Terrorism Task Force for owning a shotgun with an obliterated serial number. "If they have evidence of terrorism, which I doubt, let them bring it out," Vinikoor said. "If this is based on his religion, I object to it." Authorities said they are pursuing militant groups' crimes in this country for two reasons: to stanch funding for terror groups and to follow money that could lead them to terrorists or yield intelligence information. Detective Sgt. Bob Fromme of the Iredell County, N.C., Sheriff's Department was involved long before the current effort began. Moonlighting as a security guard at a tobacco warehouse in rural Statesville in 1995, he grew suspicious when two brothers, Mohamad and Chawki Hammoud, paid for large purchases of cigarettes with huge wads of bills wrapped tightly in rubber bands. Fromme alerted federal authorities, who installed cameras at the warehouse. The Hammouds were observed loading and unloading cigarettes that were then driven in vans by the brothers' associates to Michigan, where they were resold at a profit of 70 cents a pack. Mohamad Hammoud, it turned out, had a close relationship with Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, spiritual leader of the Lebanese-based Hezbollah organization, said Ken Bell, the U.S. attorney in Charlotte. The trial evidence included a receipt from Fadlallah to Mohamad Hammoud for $1,300 he wired to Hezbollah and a photo of Mohamad at age 15 holding an assault rifle at a Hezbollah site in Lebanon. In June, the Hammouds were convicted in federal court of running a cigarette smuggling operation, and Mohamad Hammoud was convicted of funneling money to Hezbollah, which the United States has designated as a terrorist group. The ring, which sold $7.5 million in cigarettes, also arranged for the delivery of military equipment, such as mine detection gear, blasting equipment and night-vision goggles, to Hezbollah. The FBI does not think the domestic schemes under investigation were used to finance the Sept. 11 attacks, which were funded by about $500,000 sent from abroad. But the $20 million to $30 million officials say is raised annually through scams in this country is a substantial portion of the estimated hundreds of millions of dollars that Middle Eastern terror groups raise and spend annually, authorities said. The annual budget of the al Qaeda terrorist network has been estimated at $100 million in recent years. In an effort to track the militants' money, officials are using sophisticated "data mining" software to discern subtle patterns in the habits of financial scammers, and of participants in some key industries, that could indicate surreptitious money movement. In recent months, the U.S* Customs Service has shifted its supercomputer program, known as the Numerically Integrated Profiling System (NIPS), away from tracking drug money to finding patterns that suggest commercial fraud undertaken to fund militants. The program, which traces commodities entering and leaving the country, helped pick up telling anomalies -- such as the contrast between gold imports to the United States and the amount of jewelry sold -- that led to nationwide raids on more than 70 mostly Pakistani-owned jewelry shops in late June. Investigators noticed that a Florida jewelry company, Intrigue Jewelers, was importing significantly more gold than it sold at its franchise stores. Suspicious that some of the gold was being diverted to finance al Qaeda or another terror group, agents searched 75 kiosks in seven states, removing documents and computer records. Intrigue Jewelers denies any wrongdoing or ties to terror. But sometimes, money is moved the old-fashioned way. In one case, the Customs Service and the FBI are investigating whether terrorists were the intended recipients of $659,000 in cash that agents found stuffed in boxes for baby wipes and oatmeal on April 30. The boxes were crammed into an airline passenger's suitcase, which was searched at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. On July 17, officials charged Alaa Al-Sadawi, an Egyptian-born imam at a Jersey City mosque, with currency reporting violations. He had allegedly arranged for his parents to smuggle a suitcase stuffed with $20, $50 and $100 bills on a flight to Egypt. Officials are investigating the origin of the funds. The groups move their money, officials say, by every conceivable conveyance, including wire transfers of less than $10,000, the figure that banks must report to federal authorities; by money-belted couriers; by suitcase and trunk; and by envelopes of cash sent through FedEx, DHL Worldwide Express and UPS courier companies. In the past eight months, the Customs-led Operation Green Quest has seized $16 million in currency and monetary instruments such as cashier's checks that were being sent out of the country illegally. Although some of the money is related to the drug trade and other criminal activity, officials traced much of it to bank accounts in Lebanon and elsewhere that were directly controlled by Hezbollah. A Global Operation To predict how terrorist groups might raise funds in the United States, officials also are analyzing militant organizations' financial scams overseas. U.S. officials are scrutinizing a panoply of crimes committed by Hamas and Hezbollah in the relatively lawless "tri-border" region where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay join, including drug trafficking, counterfeiting U.S. currency and manufacturing bogus software and CDs. Some groups are known to engage in schemes to fund terror activities in the United States. Associates of al Qaeda operative Ahmed Ressam eked out a living in the United States and Canada by shoplifting, stealing luggage from tourist hotels and picking pockets as they planned the unsuccessful effort to bomb Los Angeles International Airport during the 2000 millennium celebration. One of Ressam's convicted associates, Abdelghani Meskini, persuaded a Boston area fitness instructor to collect credit card data on his gym's customers, which was then used to open bogus bank accounts in New York. In May, the fitness trainer, Mohamed Amry, was charged with stealing 30 names for fraudulent purposes. In another case, some participants in a massive methamphetamine ring allegedly sent millions of dollars to Hezbollah. "It's the first time we've seen drug proceeds going back [from this country] to a terrorist organization," said Asa Hutchinson, director of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The massive methamphetamine smuggling investigation, dubbed Operation Mountain Express, resulted in the January arrests of about 100 people in 10 cities. It also found evidence of close ties between Mexican drug trafficking organizations and Arab American organized-crime groups in New York, Michigan and Canada. Arab gangs in Canada truck millions of tablets of pseudoephedrine -- an over-the-counter cold medicine ingredient that is legal in that country -- into the United States, where it is sold to Mexican gangs that use it to manufacture methamphetamine, officials said. Authorities have tracked $10 million in the gang's profits to the Middle East. The government has traced a portion of that money to accounts that are used by Hezbollah, officials said. Also among the schemes that agents are scrutinizing is coupon fraud, which offers enormous profits in increments of 10 or 20 cents at a time. Criminals hire underlings to scour trash bins and recycling centers for bundles of newspaper inserts containing retail coupons. The coupons are brought to neighborhood store owners who are part of the scheme. They redeem the coupons without selling products. In the end, the store owner and the coupon gang split the money. In the early 1990s, investigators found evidence of coupon fraud by the group that committed the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Mahmud Abouhalima, a key planner of the bombing, helped run a video store in Brooklyn that redeemed thousands of dollars of food coupons, though it sold no groceries. The Egyptian-born Abouhalima -- a top aide to Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind cleric who later was sentenced for plotting to bomb other New York City landmarks -- was convicted for his role in the bombing and sentenced to 240 years in prison. About $3.5 billion in coupons are redeemed each year, and industry leaders say that nearly 10 percent of that -- about $300 million -- is fraudulent. Although it is unknown how much money extremist groups divert from the scam, experts estimate it is at least several million dollars each year. An FBI official said the bureau had not assigned agents to these kinds of investigations in past years because they are so labor-intensive. But Bud Miller, executive director of the Coupon Information Center, an industry group, said "there's been significant interest by law enforcement" after Sept. 11. Profits and a Loss Another scam under active investigation is mass production of counterfeit name-brand clothing. Easy to manufacture and highly profitable, knockoff clothing is a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States. In May 1996, the FBI seized 100,000 counterfeit T-shirts and other goods with the Olympic logo or the Nike "swoosh" symbol that were destined for the Summer Games in Atlanta. The operation, which generated millions of dollars in profits, was also run by followers of Rahman, officials said. The profit margin on each T-shirt was $5 to $7. "There were three floors' worth of merchandise, already in pallets and stacked about seven feet high," said Dempster Leech, a now-retired New York private investigator who specialized in counterfeit products and participated in the raid. "My little heart stopped right there." But authorities again lost interest in the terror connection after the raid. "A lot of the money from that large and sophisticated ring was going to the blind sheik," said an informed official, citing telephone records and intelligence information. "But in the end, the FBI and others lost interest [in pursuing similar cases] because there were other things like drugs that were much hotter at the time." © 2002 The Washington Post Company |
| Re: "looking for rats, thousands of ants got by" |
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| jannah |
| 08/12/02 at 05:30:37 |
| God even I reading this would believe All these Arab mozlims in the US are raising/stealing/transferring money to support terrorists. Where's the other side? The hundreds of people they have in detention which they haven't even named yet. All the people the government TERRORIZED by breaking into their legitimate businesses and files and homes. Perhaps even scarier is that they openly admit to fighting crime in only certain areas when it suits them. |
| Re: "looking for rats, thousands of ants got by" |
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| mwishka |
| 08/12/02 at 08:05:39 |
| what most bothers me about this is that somehow...who knows how... :D all of a sudden it turns out that there actually ARE effective ways to counter corruption... huh? in the US?! are you kiddin us? wow, and all those stories we hear about how "well we can't get out there and stop every little mom and pop business that's he he charging a little extra for things, you know? we don't have the MANpower for something like that.." well great day in the morning!, it looks like they do, after all! guess they just hadn't been keeping track of the number of employees they have in these governmental agencies... but where that leads me is: so um how aboutt all the devious business practices that send money to israel (of most concern to me personally, but not the only country receiving US dollars this way...) quite illegally, quite constantly, and not only tax-free but DEDUCTIBLE, no doubt, all the time? what about the wealthy individuals in the US who do that? what about the businesses that aren't businesses (i.e., those 12 israelis who somehow got through all the souped up US homeland security to not only enter the US illegally but to illegally sell stuff to unsuspecting shoppers in exactly this sort of way off carts in malls, forcing unsuspecting US citizens to pay blood money to israel - he he guess they wiped out THAT ring, it was a pure dozen, and no more...suuuurrrre it was..), and what about the AMAZING day the NY times last year actually printed an article in which it was revealed that ISRAEL is the largest illegal drug trafficker of ecstasy to the US!! (though it seemed that manufacturing was also doone in europe, it was shipping straight here from israel) i don't know how on earth or who at that paper got that story printed, but that sure was a one time hush hush report. checked a few papers for follow-up --- none. ever. he he guess somebody lost a job over that one.... eh oh. ;) and once again i can only say that NONE of thismess will change EVER ANYWHERE until minds change one by one, like dominos.... it HAS to be at that level, or it won't be a permanent change (and no i think i never got to comment on that article here somewhere about hw that was NOT the way islam was spread, even though that whole article contradicted itself, and YES, that was the way islam was spread because that IS the only way lasting change occurs). doesn't have to do with govt.s at all - has to be do with acquiescence of us silly humans, each one of us, right down to our smallest children, who develop their thought patterns starting at or before about 3 weeks of age -- don't think they can't pick up on their parents' vibes toward all situations...and know how their parents prefer for them to react to kinds of people. (yes, of course, there are studies - british, i believe..) and of course, what i mean is, there's no need for us to hate israelis, there's no need for us to even hate the FBI or the CIA or 43 and his minions - oops he's 41's minion he he. these ENTITIES do NOT matter - it's individuals who matter and you can't selectively turn on your thinking and feeling and say oh well i'll just be rude to this convenience store clerk because i'm in a bad mood and she's not my ethnicity or religion so it's nothing if i do -- i'll be nice to people tomorrow....or somesuch. forget the larger entities - ignore them, don't let their existence ever affect your thinking. don't think of tthem as entities --- think of them as large populations of individuals, and wow you can interact witth every one of them in the same way you interact with your own family members and make HUGE changes in your own small segment of the world in a very short time..... eeekkkk got to get out of here..... oooohhh no, sounds a lot like a mouse rant. sorry sorry for that - really rushing s trying to write as fast as i can..... :( he he and even got a lot of the o's and t's fixed along the way..... :) mwishka |
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