Posted on 06/21/2002 5:47:53 AM PDT by areafiftyone
NEW YORK (AP) -- A man who came under intense scrutiny after he was arrested with a box cutter a day after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks pleaded guilty Thursday to credit card fraud charges.
Syed Gul Mohammed Shah entered the plea in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. His sentencing was scheduled for Aug. 15, when he would face a likely sentence of 12 to 18 months in prison.
Shah, 35, of Hyderabad, India, admitted selling 15 fraudulent credit cards for up to $2,000 a piece on the black market. Another Indian man charged in the case, Mohammed Azmath, 37, pleaded guilty to related charges earlier this month.
Outside court, defense attorney Lawrence Feitell claimed Shah was falsely labeled a potential terrorist amid a roundup of Arab-looking men in the weeks following the attacks.
Investigators later concluded that Shah and Azmath were not linked to terrorism. But they charged them with credit card fraud.
Shah and Azmath boarded a plane in Newark, N.J., on Sept. 11 to go to San Antonio. They were stranded in St. Louis when their plane was grounded along with all other air traffic after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The men then got on an Amtrak train to Texas, where they were arrested in Fort Worth after law enforcement authorities found two box cutters, hair dye, a knife and several thousand dollars among their belongings.
The circumstances of the arrests of Azmath and Shah made them suspects in the sprawling terrorism probe, especially after investigators learned that the men who hijacked four planes on Sept. 11 used box cutters to overpower flight crews.
Lawyers for the men said they had just lost their newsstand jobs in New Jersey, where they used box cutters to slice open boxes and bundles of newspapers and magazines. The hair dye was to cover graying hair, and the men had the money because they were going to San Antonio seeking work, lawyers said.
Shah, who was carrying a computer and other belongings, "did not take a trip as if he was headed to eternity," Feitell said Thursday. "He was headed to a new life."
missed this. iirc, I thought I read recently in an unrelated case, that some ME perp was merely deported after his conviction.
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