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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (29899)	5/17/2002 11:15:08 AM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

I tried to check the original Salon story, but it's subscription. There was one bit in the viewer mail that seemed plausible enough though. Christopher Ketcham is too quick to dismiss the mundane theory that these people are just part of an art-selling racket. Let me try to resolve some of the "many problems with this theory": 1. Who are these "students"? Well, they are no art students, but rather young Israeli men and women out to make a buck after their military service. Many young Israelis go for a long trip abroad after they finish their compulsory military service. In fact it has become almost a universal right of passage. Working illegally in the U.S. (in this case as art sellers) is a well-known way to finance these kind of trips. 2. Who are the organizers? They are Israeli criminal gangs operating here in the U.S. Like any other immigrant community the Israeli community in the U.S. has its share of ethnically based criminal gangs. Selling art illegally is probably the most innocuous of their criminal activities. These gangs have strong ties to Israel and are able to recruit the sellers quite easily. 3. Why use foreign nationals for your moneymaking scheme? That actually makes a lot of sense. The "art students" stay in the country a few months at most and are therefore less likely to compromise the organizers. While here, the sellers are completely dependent on the organizers and are therefore less likely to cause any trouble. The risk to all parties involved is minimal; if caught the sellers will be at most fined and deported. Under current immigration rules this will probably not prevent them from entering the U.S. say in 10 years, this time as legitimate businessmen, lawyers, doctors or engineers. 4. Why run this racket at all? It seems to me that if you can make or import those paintings for let's say a dollar, and then go on and sell them for 10 to 15 dollars, you have a pretty lucrative business. The seller gets half, the organizer gets half and everybody's happy (including the people who bought the paintings). 5. Why do they use the bogus Bezalel cover story? Bezalel is the leading art school in Israel and maybe these "students" in a somewhat provincial way think it's well known. 6. Why in the world would people try to sell cheap art market to DEA officials and how come they have "black information" about federal facilities? Well, they don't. If you sell paintings from office building to office building in any city in the U.S., you are bound to hit on a few federal buildings, some of them unlisted. If you sell paintings from house to house you are bound to come upon the homes of federal employees. Most office buildings have some sort of security and if you are selling paintings illegally it makes sense to try and bypass it. As for these art students specifically going to DEA agents' homes, all we know is that they did not continue to the neighbors' houses. If I was such a seller and encountered a suspicious homeowner I might decide to call it a day on the chance that he would call the police. I suspect that the DEA is the only agency to alert its people to this phenomenon, and was therefore the only one to compile such a report. Maybe if the FDA or the CDC put their people on notice you might get similar reports. Finally, as any young Israeli can tell you, this racket is not new. It was actually run in Japan from the mid-'80s to the mid-'90s until the Japanese authorities (and some say Japanese organized crime) put an end to it. In Japan they used to sell paintings on the street. This practice is obviously impossible in the U.S., so they sell them door-to-door. On the other hand I seem to remember a friend telling me that the Mossad does send its recruits on similar training missions, so maybe there are darker mysteries to uncover. One can never tell. -- Shmulik Ravid salon.com Only a teeny bit sinister. I imagine Mossad's operations are in general a little more precisely targeted. Who cares what the DEA is doing, anyway?

To: Ilaine who wrote (29899)	5/17/2002 11:17:50 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>> Suspicious Visitors to Federal Facilities [This is from a federal agency! CB] In the past six weeks, employees in federal office buildings located throughout the United States have reported suspicious activities connected with individuals representing themselves as foreign students selling or delivering artwork. Employees have observed both males and females attempting to bypass facility security and enter federal buildings. If challenged, the individuals state that they are delivering artwork from a studio in Miami, Florida, called Universal Art, Inc, or that they are art students and are looking for opinions regarding their work. These individuals have been described as aggressive. They attempt to engage employees in conversation rather than giving a sales pitch. Federal police officers have arrested two of these individuals for trespassing and discovered that the suspects possessed counterfeit work visas and green cards. These individuals have also gone to the private residences of senior federal officials under the guise of selling art. Other reporting indicates that there may be two groups involved, and they refer to themselves as "Israeli art students." One group has an apparently legitimate money- making goal while the second, perhaps a non-Israeli group, may have ties to a Middle Eastern Islamic fundamentalist group. Federal employees observing any activity similar to that described above should report their observations to appropriate security officials.<< ncix.gov