SEATTLE - A federal grand jury in Seattle indicted 12 people in an alleged international money-laundering scheme that funneled more than $12 million to Iraq. The indictment, handed up Wednesday and unsealed Thursday, alleges that between April 2000 and January 2002, a ring of agents throughout the United States collected money domestically and sent it to a company called Alshafei Family Connect in suburban Edmonds. The company, owned and principally operated by Hussein Alshafei, an Iraqi native and naturalized U.S. citizen, then shipped the money to London and other overseas cities and eventually to Iraq, the indictment alleges. The actions...
