Free Republic

Millions of taxpayers dollars trafficked through food stamp fraud went to terrorists who funded their activities at home and abroad, according to an explosive report from the Government Accountability Institute (GAI). The report from GAI, where Breitbart News Senior-Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer serves as president, highlighted several instances where money obtained through Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits fraud went to fund acts of terrorism, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombings and the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing. Although this method of using food stamp fraud money for terrorism has been around since the 1980s, it gained notoriety when New York...

Court documents filed in federal court claim that a suspected drug traffickers linked to Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel used a Middle Eastern honor system to launder drug proceeds. Known as a Hawala, members of the conspiracy would be hired by cartel members in Canada and Mexico to move drug proceeds through the honor system that does not leave a paper trail as couriers move the money between countries. “Drug traffickers in Canada would generate drug proceeds from multi-kilogram and multi-pound sales and distribution of drugs provided by Mexican cartels, including the Sinaloa Cartel,” court records obtained by Breitbart Texas revealed. A...

Federal agents have raided several convenience stores and a mosque in tiny Henderson, N.C., while arresting at least two Muslim men in connection with the raid. Authorities suspect the stores were operating a so-called hawala money-transfer network supporting terrorist activities in Yemen, including al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, WND has learned. AQAP's leaders include fugitive al-Qaida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who has been linked to 10 major terror plots in the past year alone.

A New York man was arrested Wednesday on charges that he unwittingly funded a Connecticut man's attempt to bomb Times Square on May 1 by providing unlicensed banking services, an arrest that continues an effort by federal authorities to reduce the illegal flow of money that can finance terrorism. Mohammad Younis, 44, was accused in an indictment in U.S. District Court in Manhattan of engaging in hawala activities, an informal banking system which relies on wire transfers, couriers and overnight mail. He was arrested at his Long Island home and brought to the courthouse, where he was expected to make...

Times Square Is Evacuated in Bomb Scare The scene at Times Square on Saturday night after police found a suspicious package inside a Pathfinder on West 45th Street. RAY RIVERA and KARIN HENRY May 1, 2010 A bomb in Times Square led to the evacuation of thousands of tourists and theatergoers from the area on a warm and busy Saturday evening, the police said. There was no explosion. “It appears to be a car bomb left in a Pathfinder between Seventh and Eighth,” said Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman. The device, he said, contained “explosive...

February 5, 2009 Note: the following text is a quote: http://baltimore.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel09/ba020509.htm PAKISTANI NATIONAL PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRACY TO OPERATE AN UNLICENSED MONEY REMITTING BUSINESS Baltimore, Maryland - Imdad Ullah Ranjha, age 34, a Pakistani national residing in Glen Burnie, Maryland, pleaded guilty today to conspiring to operate an unlicensed money remitting business, announced United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein. According to his guilty plea, Imdad Ranjha worked at Hamza, Inc., a money remitter business in the District of Columbia operated by co-defendant Saifullah Ranjha (S. Ranjha). A cooperating witness, acting at the direction of law...

A federal grand jury in Baltimore has indicted 39 people in an international money laundering scheme using an informal currency transfer system known as hawala, the U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday. The defendants and one business face charges including money laundering, conspiracy to bribe a public official and operating unlicensed money transmitting businesses, U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein said in a statement. The indictments seek the forfeiture of more than $5 million and ownership interest in two Maryland convenience stores. Five other people were charged with bribery and one other with money laundering in the scheme, the Justice Department said....

The ruins of the World Trade Center were still burning when federal agents arrested two men at Kennedy Airport who were found with more than $140,000 hidden in cardboard boxes with honey jars bound for Yemen. For the agents, aware that terrorists were said to use honey shipments to hide money, that slender lead could not be ignored. If the world was suddenly different for everybody back then, in October 2001, with federal agents and prosecutors both properly alarmed and also under sudden pressure to make terrorism cases, they still relied on old techniques developed in generations of Mafia and...

Ohio man pleads guilty to money laundering, illegally transferring funds to Iran Used "Hawala" scheme and foreign bank accounts to illegally move funds to Iran TOLEDO, Ohio - A Fostoria, Ohio, physician pleaded guilty here yesterday to 36 counts of money laundering and illegally transferring funds to Iran. This guilty plea was announced by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Agent-in-Charge Brian M. Moskowitz; and Vincent C. Williams, Special Agent-in-Charge for the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigative Division (IRS-CI) in Cleveland. Mohammad Anvari-Hamedani, 72, is a naturalized U.S citizen originally from Iran. In April 2002, ICE and the IRS...

Terrorists, drug dealers and smugglers are using a global system as old as the Silk Road to finance their operations. And there's not much we can do about it. Between 1995 and 2003 the Yemeni immigrant and a group of family members, friends and associates sent $22 million by way of a JPMorgan Chase bank account to countries all over the world, including Pakistan, Thailand and Yemen. Among the alleged recipients: Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad, a Yemeni sheikh who boasted of his ties to Osama bin Laden and was sentenced in July to 75 years in federal prison for conspiring...

Ottawa pulls Saudi group's charity status Tax violation: Muslim World League being sued by 9/11 families Stewart Bell National Post Monday, December 01, 2003 TORONTO - Federal regulators have revoked the charity status of the Canadian branch of a Saudi organization that has faced longstanding allegations of ties to terrorism. A notice in the government publication Canada Gazette said the Muslim World League (MWL) is one of several charities that "have not met the filing requirements of the Income Tax Act." The revocation came into effect on Nov. 15, but the organization, dedicated to promoting Islam, was still calling itself...

MUMBAI: Mafia gangs here are major buyers of small arms in the international market, and police here are not surprised by reports that they are now making purchases from Nepal's Maoist guerrillas. The mafia has established links in the international drugs, arms and human trafficking circuit for several years, police officers say. Apart from different guns, the mafia is known to buy assault rifles and huge amounts of ammunition. The underworld is known to show a preference for grenades. However, considering the small scale of their operations, Mumbai's mafia dons do not go in for items like grenade launchers, which...

The USA PATRIOT Act lets the feds spy on your finances. But does it help catch terrorists? "This is really a bill which, if enacted into law, will be [a longer] step in the direction of stopping terrorism than any other we have had before this Congress in a long time," one of the bill’s sponsors declared. The legislation authorized broad surveillance of financial transactions, bypassing the Fourth Amendment’s normal protections against "unreasonable searches and seizures" by requiring businesses to collect and share information with the government. After the measure passed and was signed into law, the debate was far...

The arrest of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Md Yaseen Malik on Monday has re-focussed attention on the foreign funding of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. Police and intelligence agencies reckon that the largest recipient of foreign funds is the All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC), the 23-group separatist conglomerate. J&K Police have registered several FIRs charging senior Hurriyat leaders with receiving foreign monies through the hawala route, and some Rs 200 crore are believed to have been pumped into Kashmir from abroad in the dozen years of armed militancy. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are believed to be the...