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Brooklyn Imam Convicted In 'Cesspool Of Fraud'

POSTED: 7:05 pm EDT September 23, 2004

NEW YORK -- The former director of a basement Brooklyn mosque that prosecutors described as a "cesspool of fraud" has been convicted of defrauding the U.S. government by processing hundreds of bogus applications for religious workers.

Muhammad Khalil, 63, was convicted late Wednesday of conspiring to submit hundreds of false applications on behalf of illegal aliens under the federal Religious Worker Program and to obtain Social Security cards in false names. He could face more than five years in prison at sentencing Jan. 18, prosecutors said Thursday in a release.

In closing arguments, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Burns told a jury that Khalil was motivated by greed to create a "massive, modern and sophisticated scheme to defraud the immigration authorities and the Social Security Administration."

"The defendant's unbridled greed generated hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars off the backs of aliens desperate to stay in this country any way they could," Burns said.

He said the Dar Ehya Essunnah mosque looked nothing like what would be expected for what Khalil maintained was a congregation of as many as 400 families.

It was, he said, "figuratively and literally a cesspool of fraud." He said the mosque, in the basement of a variety and greeting card store, had a dirty stove and bathroom and mattresses where people slept.

"The government doesn't deny there may be a prayer room in one of the photographs and there may be a podium with some religious materials on top of it, jammed up against the bed," Burns said. "Whether or not he runs a legitimate mosque is really not the point. The point is that he used that mosque to commit a massive amount of fraud."

Defense lawyer Roger Stavis insisted in his closing that Khalil operated a legitimate mosque and that prosecutors relied on a "rogues gallery of witnesses" to discredit him.

"These people are lying," he said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward O'Callaghan called Khalil "a document fraud king" who for nearly 10 years had taken advantage of the Religious Worker Program, formerly administered by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

He said Khalil, a U.S. citizen, charged each of his victims $5,000 in cash "so he could get rich and live his version of the American dream."

Since 1993, he had sponsored more than 200 applications for people seeking immigrant and non-immigrant work visas through the program. In 2001 alone, he sponsored about 130 Religious Worker applications.

The mosque closed after Khalil's arrest in February 2003.

http://www.wnbc.com/news/3756726/detail.html