NYC Terror Raid Busts Ice Cream Shop
NEW YORK (Nov. 9) - At dawn, armed FBI agents assigned to an anti-terrorism unit converged on an unlikely front in the war on terrorism: a tiny ice cream shop in Brooklyn.
Elfgeeh's shop, Carnival ice cream store in Brooklyn, was an alleged conduit for illegal money transfers.
The agents arrested the Yemeni proprietor, a naturalized U.S. citizen, who lived three floors above. Based on a tip, they said, they had learned that $20 million had passed through the bank accounts of his business from 1997 until the raid in January.
The proprietor, Abad Elfgeeh, pleaded guilty last month in a proceeding that escaped notice, perhaps because the illegal money-transfer charge against him never mentioned terrorism.
But a review of court files by The Associated Press revealed that prosecutors believe Elfgeeh was an associate of Sheik Mohammed Hasa Al-Moayad, a prominent Yemeni cleric charged with funneling millions to al-Qaida in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Elfgeeh has denied any connection. Al-Moayad is being held in Germany, where he is fighting extradition to the United States.
The allegations of an illicit connection between the two men stem from the federal government's crackdown on informal money transfer networks known as "hawalas."
Muslim immigrants have used the networks - which rely on wire transfers, couriers and overnight mail - to send cash to their families overseas.
But since the Sept. 11 attacks, authorities have worked to dismantle the system, fearing it allows terrorists to raise and launder money. Osama bin Laden has boasted that hawalas created cracks in the Western financial system that "were as familiar to him and his al-Qaida colleagues as the lines of their own hands," a recent congressional report warned.
Offices of companies providing hawala services have been shuttered in cities around the United States. In Brooklyn alone, more than a dozen Arab or Muslim men have been charged with transferring money without a license. One, an American of Egyptian descent, was convicted in July of trying to smuggle $659,000 in boxes of Ritz crackers, Quaker Oats and baby wipes stuffed in a suitcase on a flight to Egypt.
In his plea after the Jan. 18 raid on his ice cream shop, Elfgeeh, 48, said he began informally transferring money for family and friends for a fee in 1995. He said he "intended to get a license, but never got around to it."
But authorities said documents seized in his shop revealed a pattern of deception.
Tax records showed the shop had average annual revenue of about $185,000, but court papers said that from November 2001 to November 2002 alone, Elfgeeh's bank accounts had deposits of more than $5.3 million - money later transferred to banks in Yemen and elsewhere.
Investigators say they connected Elfgeeh to the Yemeni cleric, Al-Moayad, following a sting operation in Germany in which Al-Moayad told an FBI informant that he supplied $20 million, recruits and weapons to Osama bin Laden.
Al-Moayad allegedly named four men in New York - including Elfgeeh - he claimed had secretly transferred funds to him in Yemen. He also "said he received money for 'jihad' that was collected from the Al Farouq mosque in Brooklyn," court papers said.
Past investigations identified the mosque as a place of worship for terrorists, including the men who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. Mosque leaders have dismissed any current connection.
REST AT:
11/09/03 18:19 EST
aolsvc.news.aol.com |
