Editor's note: Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin is a weekly online, subscription intelligence news service from the creator of WorldNetDaily.com – a journalist who has been developing sources around the world for the last 25 years.
From convenience stores, to money laundering operations, to identity fraud rings, Islamic terror allies are raising millions in criminal enterprises inside the U.S. and sending the money abroad for more attacks on the West.
For example, last week police broke up a money laundering scheme using dozens of convenience stores in Cincinnati's poorest neighborhoods. More than $100 million was raised by selling stolen goods and inflating prices for the desperately poor, say police and prosecutors, who believe the money might have been used to fund terrorism around the globe.
In the scheme, police say, organizers paid pennies on the dollar for stolen goods – such as cigarettes and teeth-whitening strips – and then re-sold them at high profits.
Police say they can already prove that $37 million went through the bank accounts of the man they believe is the ringleader, but they estimate that was "only a third" of the total, said Cincinnati Police Chief Thomas Streicher.
Much of the money, the chief added, has been sent back to Middle Eastern countries, often in amounts just under the $10,000 limit that requires the transfer to be reported to the U.S. government.
Omran Saleh |
Omran Saleh, a Canton, Ohio, businessman who also has a Green Township address, is described as the head of the organization. He was among 23 people arrested in connection with the two-year undercover investigation that resulted in a 105-count Hamilton County indictment.
Saleh, like most of those arrested, is of Palestinian-Arab descent. Many of the defendants are naturalized Americans.
The major players arrested have been charged with engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, money laundering and tampering with government records, charges that carry up to 10 years in prison.
Some of those arrested are also accused of charging exorbitant fees to cash checks.
Police say the scheme operated like this: Store owners would pay others – "usually drug addicts," one official said – to steal items they could then resell. Popular items were cigarettes and teeth-whitening strips. The items could be stolen in as small amounts as a few packages or as large as truckloads.
The stolen goods were resold through the markets at prices that were two, three, four or five times higher than normal, said Streicher.
At least five of the stores searched Thursday have been padlocked and authorities will try to close them permanently.
The allegations come as little surprise to some who live in the neighborhoods.
Store operators sometimes tore open packs of cigarettes and sold individual cigarettes to people who didn't have enough money to buy a pack, the man said.
That's not the only all-American scam designed to raise money for international terrorists.
Two Dearborn, Michigan, men were arrested last month and several items confiscated during a raid by Federal Bureau of Investigations agents.
Ahmad Musa Jebril and his father, Musa Abdallah Jebril, were charged in a 20-count indictment with creating fake identities and using false Social Security numbers.
Ahmad Jebril has reportedly been an outspoken critic of U.S. policy towards the Middle East.
The two Dearborn men accused of bank fraud and money laundering are also being investigated for possible links to terrorism.
In a search warrant filed in U.S. District Court, the FBI lists several items seized from the home including a "Hamas poster." The United States has designated Hamas a terrorist organization, and the U.S. Treasury Department has frozen its assets.
Federal authorities accuse the men of buying 13 homes and two apartment buildings in the Detroit area since 1988 and insuring them for far more than they were worth. They are accused of defrauding six local banks of more than $250,000.
The two men reportedly created fake identification cards, including one that used the name, "Alsalafyoon Alatharyoon," which reportedly refers to al-Qaida.
And here's another more brazen scam taking place offshore: Federal authorities charged five men Friday for hiding more than $60 million from tax officials and smuggling it out of the U.S. Virgin Islands, officials said.
Fathi Yusuf, 62, his son Maher Yusuf, 36, and Waleed Hamed, 38, and Waheed Hamed, 41, all appeared before U.S. District Magistrate Geoffrey Barnard.
A federal grand jury charged them with wire fraud and money laundering, among other crimes. The men live in St. Thomas and St. Croix, islands in the U.S. Caribbean territory of 108,000.
An arrest warrant was also issued for Isam Yousuf, of St. Martin, a relative of the other defendants. He also faces money laundering charges.
Maher Yusuf was born in St. Croix. Fathi Yusuf and both Hameds, who are distant relatives, were born in Jordan, but are naturalized U.S. citizens.
The three also face tax evasion charges for submitting inaccurate tax returns to the Virgin Islands Internal Revenue Bureau, said U.S. Attorney David Nissman, who announced the indictments.
The five men manage a three-store supermarket chain and hid millions of dollars in cash at the stores, Nissman said. The stores generated $300 million in sales, $60 million of which the men did not report, he said.
The men would wrap the cash in aluminum foil so it could pass through airport X-ray machines undetected, and then mailed and wired the money in small denominations to bank accounts in Amman, Jordan, and French St. Martin, FBI special agent Ted Sulzbach said.
Sulzbach testified that Fathi Yusuf and Waleed Hamed used the money to fund a tile factory in Jordan and to purchase property there and in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Officials have frozen the defendants' U.S. bank accounts and were seeking forfeitures exceeding $60 million. Authorities said they were trying to freeze their accounts in Jordan and St. Martin.
The men face between 20 and 93 years in prison if convicted.
Cash is king for terrorist groups, but never more so than today. While most nations aggressively try to halt the torrent of money worldwide by tightening banking regulations and restricting some Muslim charities, terrorists have quickly improvised. The terrorist financiers are now relying less on traditional commerce to move money.
Instead, enormous sums of cash raised through illegal activities are being transported in suitcases and containers. The terrorists also depend on the hawala financial system, whose money brokers in the Middle East, Pakistan, India and southern Asia can transfer cash from one office to another, based on trust.
Terrorists need cash to finance their networks, for the salaries of operatives and protection money for friendly governments. In the 1990s, a large part of al-Qaida's budget was paid to the governments of Sudan and Afghanistan, analysts say.
Other illegal networks – drug traffickers, for example – have always prized legitimate places to stash their enormous profits, using legal businesses like banks and brokerage houses to launder their dirty money. This spawned a generation of financial detectives, who learned how to unravel the most complex money-laundering schemes.
But most terrorism financiers do the opposite of the drug barons. Instead of laundering their money, they keep it away from institutions that create a paper trail. They use criminal activities, like cigarette smuggling, credit card fraud and check forgery, to raise cash, then ship the money overseas or have a courier deliver it. Thus, a new black market has been created, and the goal is to keep the money invisible, not by washing it, but by hiding it.
Other methods include money laundering, credit-card fraud and petty theft, all areas that Western groups sympathetic to al-Qaida are thought to have moved into in the past two years. The American Treasury, which chaired one of the Stockholm sessions, remains upbeat, citing the $135 million that has been frozen worldwide in terrorist assets.
But terrorism of the al-Qaida sort does not need a lot of money. The attacks on Sept. 11 cost $500,000 at most. The attack on the USS Cole in Aden three years ago cost just $50,000. That's just one successful visit to a rich benefactor, who asks no questions and who pays in cash.
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