Suspicious cell phone purchases investigated

Hartford City, IN — The Indiana Homeland Security department was notified about the cell phone purchases. Two men have been questioned in Hartford City, Indiana.

22-year-old Bilal Muhamed Mustafa and 29-year old Sultan Allah Muhammond came to the Alco discount store looking to buy a particular model Nokia Trac phone in bulk. Terrorism experts say Tracphones can't be traced and are known to be used by terrorists as detenators for bombs.

"Oh I was suspicious," said Alco Store Manager, Kenny Mazelin. " They always said after 9/11 be vigilant with cell phones sales and that we should contact somebody." That's just what store manager Kenny Mazelin did. The men drove a grey Nissan Altima rental down from Minnesota and just recently got Minnesota id's.

"We were told Minnesota cops questioned one of their brothers for the same type of business transaction regarding cell phones," said Detective Eric Hawk, Hartford City Police. Mustafa told police he buys the cell phones and puts a special chip in them that can make them work as prepaid on any cell network. He said he then sells the phones at a small profit.

The two men weren't interested in buying the minutes it takes to activate the phones only the phones themselves at Alco. They wanted as many as they could get and had cash to pay for them. "They told us they'd buy forty if we had 'em," said manager Mazelin."They came in three times, police got here in time to question them the third time."

The men evaded officers questions and didn't want their pictures taken. It's not illegal to buy cell phones in bulk. Neither men were arrested or held for further questioning. Fox 59 reached Bilal Muhamed Mustafa on a cell number he gave police. He hung up. Police say the case remains open.

Questions for you....

After seeing all the evidence that was quite apparent preceding 9-11 do you believe a more vigilant attitude would have prevented or diminished that event?

Are we seeing the same circumstances here?

Can we afford to have the attitude, " Well this could be all innocent circumstances, looking into it won't help" ?

Listen not many people carry thousands of dollars IN CASH on them selves and travel from city to city ( and state to state) with the same EXACT MO. doing the same thing. If they wanted to get a hold of these phones in those kind of numbers my bet would be that an arrangement could be maid at the wholesale level or at least getting some cheap knock off from china at a fraction of the cost.

So this "equitable" hand wringing that we can not have a suspicious eye on purchasing cell phones that HAVE been used countless times to blow up our soldiers with IED's is libertarian naivety.

You imply that these people make sense. They are moonbats, so who knows why they need so many. They probably have way more people than we think anyway. Either that, or Mustafa's "friends and family" plan needs to be bigger.

Maybe but think of it this way. Perhaps they aren't the moonbats you think they are. Thousands of cell phones represent a much more difficult trace problem. If they are of the "pre-paid" variety they come with assigned numbers. Be hard to track just which ones could be active tirggers, although it would be easy to just shut down the coverage area (as in the case of NYC a few weeks ago). Not being a demo expert I could be all wet, but that seems to make the most sense as to why they are buying them in bulk.

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying for example you could buy one of these for 20 dollars and unlock it and use Sprint?

Yes...with a sprint contract, or any other provider. The wireless carriers are engineering these phones with their own "software" so that the phone only works on their network or only has the gizmos *they* want on the phone. Personally, I think it's wrong.

It's no different than buying a television at Best Buy (any kind) and Best Buy programs it so that it only gets certain stations and only performs certain functions that are limited in scope to the television's entire performance.

This whole thing is very troubling.

On the one hand, the "unlocking to resell them for big profit" story makes perfect sense (see my posting history for some links -- they're right toward the top of my posting history page, maybe five posts from the top).

It's also the kind of "arbitrage" racket that would be a natural for middle-eastern "camel-trader" types. About 25 years ago I had a retail camera store. Bought and sold used equipment. College town, *lots* of middle-eastern types. You would not *believe* the kind of horse-trading these guys would do. They have the sharpest pencil in the world. Maddening, to an *American* who simply wants to write up the sale and get on to the *next* customer.

I found out that much of the stuff they were buying (used cameras and lenses) was going back to the middle east, to be sold on the black market. Apparently there was a killing to be made due to the exhorbitant prices in the "white" market (severe duties and import taxes, from what I gathered), so these guys would buy up stuff here, take it home with them, sell at a huge profit, and still be able to have "bargain" prices for their customers.

The ease with which they slipped into "camel-trader" mode made it pretty obvious to me that it was a cultural thing, something they'd been doing for years. (I can only imagine the hoops they'd put a used car dealer through! :)

So, it makes sense that they'd find an opportunity to "buy low, sell high" with these phones in a racket like this.

But on the other hand... The fact that the story makes perfect sense, *also* means that it would make a perfect *cover* story.

Maybe they *are* actually reselling them on the "gray" market. (This would also perhaps explain them tossing the "stock" wall-wart chargers -- they'd probably bundle them with drop-in rapid chargers, to make even more money. People forking out for a phone like that would probably *not* want one with an "overnight" wall-wart charger -- they'd want to be able to do a quick easy rapid-charge. And if the dealers sell *those* too, well, even more money in the bank for 'em.)

But, maybe they're only doing that with "some" of them, capesh? IF this is the "business model", they'd -- with all the thousands and thousands of phones going through their hands -- be able to "prove" that they really *are* selling them for resale. Of course, if "only" a few *hundred* phones "fell through the cracks" and *don't* show up in their sales records, how is any investigator going to find out about it? All they're going to see is a bunch of receipts for cash purchases of phones, and payment records from buyers, but there'd be *no* way to track individual phones.

Stuff to keep us up at night, worrying... (at least until Aug. 22 and the other likely target dates have passed).

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