Black Market Billions: How Organized Retail Crime Funds Global Terrorists (Gal Zentner's Library) (19 page)

Making Fake Documents

One thread (albeit, an expensive one) that all terrorist and ORC groups have in common is producing and using fake documents to conceal their illegal activities. This includes using fake passports, travel documents, company credentials, and driver’s licenses. However, the cost of getting people into the U.S. since 9/11 has tripled, and with insufficient border control, it’s become easier to get illegals
into the country. Most of the cost has to do with fake green card costs. U.S. residents and naturalized citizens by the hundreds send their Social Security cards, “green cards,” stripped-out visas, or passports to their former countries, where people pay thousands of dollars for one with a photo that matches their features and age.

Specialists may superimpose a razor-thin image over the passport photo to retain a new picture.
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Says Detective Amaury Guevara of the LAPD, “There has been a trend with violent criminals to pursue nonviolent ways to make and raise money. They are getting older and are less inclined to shoot people for payment. Therefore, making connections within prison and creating fake official documents is another very lucrative revenue stream.”
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In a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano in June 2010, Representative Sue Myrick (R-NC) warned that the Hezbollah might be colluding with drug cartels along the U.S.-Mexican border. She called on Homeland Security to establish a task force to clamp down on the national security threat.
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She noted that Iranian agents and members of the Hezbollah were learning Spanish in Hugo Chavez-run Venezuela before trying to obtain false documents to enter the U.S. as purported Mexicans.

In the events leading up to 9/11, many of the terrorists, including Mohammad Atta and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, had United Arab Emirates IDs that allowed them entry into the U.S. However, as with many potential terrorists brought in from overseas, their documents were forged and created based on legitimate (and legal) documents obtained through family members.

When Atta applied for a U.S. visa, however, his application was denied. Earlier in 1999, Osama bin Laden had sent Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to Yemen to help Rahim al-Nashiri obtain explosives for the planned ship bombings (the USS
The Sullivans
and the USS
Cole
in January and October 2000) and to obtain a visa to visit the U.S. so that he could participate in an operation there. Atta applied under another name, using the cover story that he would be visiting a
medical clinic to obtain a new prosthesis for his leg. Another al Qaeda operative gave Atta the name of someone living in the U.S. whom Khalid Sheikh Mohammed could use as a point of contact on a visa application. Atta contacted this individual to help him get an appointment at a U.S. clinic.
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Atta and Abu Zubaydah each played key roles in facilitating travel for al Qaeda operatives. In addition, al Qaeda had an “office of passports,” located in host countries such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Afghanistan and overseen by its security committee. One of the offices was located at the Kandahar airport and was managed by Mohammed Atef (another al Qaeda operative and alleged military chief of al Qaeda). The committee altered papers including passports, visas, and identification cards.
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Moreover, certain al Qaeda members were charged with organizing passport collection schemes to keep the pipeline of fraudulent documents flowing. To this end, al Qaeda requires jihadists to turn in their passports before going to the front lines in Afghanistan. In the ultimate in identity swapping, if the operatives are killed, their passports are recycled for use.
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The operational mission training course taught operatives how to forge documents. Certain passport alteration methods also were taught, including substituting photos and erasing and adding travel cachets. Manuals demonstrating the technique of “cleaning” visas were reportedly circulated among operatives. Atta and Zakariya Essabar were reported to have been trained in passport alteration.
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Getting into the U.S. by Way of Fake Passports and Human Smuggling

“The terrorists are smart about which passports they use,” says David Simcox, director of migration demographics and chairman of the board of the Center for Immigration Studies, in an interview for PBS’s
Frontline
. “At least two of the September 11th attackers used stolen Saudi Arabian passports. Saudi Arabia is a friend of the U.S., so using their passport makes it easier to get in at the border.” Many
times terrorists work in conjunction with corrupt government officials who allow them to purchase a legitimate passport issued in the terrorists’ own names, or using an alias, for several thousand dollars. Or the terrorist can purchase the passport off the black market from countries that have “visa-free” relationships with the U.S., such as Japan and Sweden. Speaking of paying people off, terrorists have recently started working with human traffickers. For all intents and purposes, they are fake document and passport experts and have ready documents used to smuggle scores of people over the border. The average cost to get a fake passport from a smuggler is upwards of $50,000. As a bonus, the human smugglers can help smuggle terrorists over the border. Most of the time these smugglers work in conjunction with drug cartels and gangs, such as the MS-13, to ensure a smooth journey and law enforcement-free routes. (This means that law enforcement was paid off using ORC funds and sales from pirated merchandise.)

To find out if this theory was in fact true, I spoke to a Department of Homeland Security officer while I was leaving Palomas, Mexico. He was stationed at the second checkpoint going back into the U.S. “Everyone knows the Mexican side of the border is corrupt,” he said. “Let’s say you had ten bags filled with $100,000 of cash each. Even if they inquired about it, you could make a deal with them by giving them a bag, and they will let you through, no questions asked.”

Making or obtaining a counterfeit passport isn’t that difficult, according to Detective Guevara. Blank British passports have been known to be sold at premium cost through dishonest employees at passport offices. In addition to forging official documents from exchange-friendly countries, terrorists create fake Puerto Rican driver’s licenses because they are valid in the U.S. Furthermore, law enforcement officials in states in the middle of the country and the West probably don’t know what one looks like. “It comes down to training, and unfortunately for law enforcement, it’s hard for them to tell the difference between a fake Puerto Rican driver’s license and a legitimate one. You have one or two lazy guys who don’t feel like
doing the research, and all of a sudden millions of dollars of merchandise is moving across the border, no questions asked.” Guevara says the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), while trained in identifying fake passports by checking them against a database, can barely tell the difference anymore, because the quality is getting so good.

The Hammoud brothers from North Carolina knew what it was like to be a part of an identity theft scheme. They operated a Hezbollah support cell out of Charlotte, which included cigarette smuggling, money laundering, and immigration fraud. Mohamad Hammoud became involved with the Hezbollah when he joined the group’s militia at the age of 15 in Beirut, Lebanon. Many of the members of the theft group he was working with out of North Carolina were tied to the same neighborhood in Beirut and knew each other long before they immigrated to the U.S.
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The bond between Hammoud and his brothers was facilitated by family ties, religion, criminal activities, and an association with and sympathy for the Hezbollah.
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In the case of the cigarette smuggling scheme in North Carolina, financial investigations linked more than 800 bank accounts to the Hammoud brothers cell. They also had multiple identities adopted from departing international students who had acquired driver’s licenses, Social Security cards, credit histories, and the necessary immigrant documents. Harb was a friend of the family who worked with the brothers and was recruited to deliver $3,500 to a Hezbollah military commander in Lebanon. He became part of the state’s evidence and testified against the brothers. He admitted that he would max out credit cards he obtained with a particular identity, declare bankruptcy, and then refrain from using the identity of a departing student for another seven years. He made at least $150,000 per contraband identity card.
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According to the
Identity Theft Handbook: Detection, Prevention and Security
by Martin T. Biegelman, travel documents are as important as weapons. Terrorists must travel clandestinely to meet, train, plan, case targets, and gain access to attack. The Internet has been
a gateway for easy access to fraudulent documents. Biegelman notes in his book that many web sites offer fake IDs. One site, now closed pending a criminal prosecution, was
www.fakeidsite.com
. Another site, also shut down, was
www.sob-ids.com
. It allowed customers to come to their physical location if they happened to be in Mexico. The site allegedly had to relocate to avoid U.S. government investigation and prosecution. But before the site was shut down, one customer noted, “The holograms were flawless, and the bar code and magnetic strips work.”

The Great Entrepreneurs: Terrorists

The new terrorists are much better financed than their predecessors, who relied mainly on crime or the funds of antigovernment state-based groups. Today’s terrorists have income streams from legal and illegal sources and are not accountable to state sponsors or anybody else.
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Terrorist organizations are run much like corporations, employing personal assistants, chief financial officers, and spokesmen.

According to Horacio Calderon, an expert on international affairs and terrorism, “ghost” companies are established by criminal and terrorist front men to conduct their operations and businesses even on a small scale. The al Qaeda networks and prime transnational crime organizations are always looking for new state-of-the-art technologies to hide their assets. They conduct their business using sophisticated measures and countermeasures to avoid detection and monitor punitive actions from enemy intelligence as well as law enforcement agencies.
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The Hezbollah as Entrepreneurs

The Galeria Page mall is well known as a main source of fund-raising for the Hezbollah in Paraguay. It also is a front for the central headquarters for members in the Tri-Border Area. The mall was
established in 2001 and houses many shell businesses, including electronic and import/export stores.

Executive Order 13224 empowers the U.S. Secretary of State to designate certain individuals or entities as having committed or as posing a significant risk of committing acts of terrorism that threaten national security.
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The Galeria Page mall has been considered a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) since December 6, 2006.
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Jomana Import Export, owned by Samer Mehdi, was identified as an entity providing support (in this case, financial support) to foreign terrorists. It was aided by Cedar Distributors, an electronics distributor and exporter based in Miami, Florida (owned by Khaled T. Safadi) with operations throughout the U.S. It was distributing and selling, among other items, Sony PlayStation 2 consoles, gaming equipment, and cameras. The company was incorporated in 1997 and is still active.

Transamerica Express of Miami is a freight-forwarding business owned by Ulises Talavera. Talavera knew Mehdi for years, but it was only after Jomana Import Export was designated as an SDGT that they started doing business together on March 30, 2007. Mehdi asked Safadi and Cedar to forward 200 Sony brand digital cameras to defendants Talavera and Transamerica to export to Jomana in the Galeria Page. Jumbo Cargo Inc. is another freight-forwarding company owned by Emilio Gonzalez-Neira, a Paraguayan national who legally resided in the U.S. Although this business had other legitimate business going on, Gonzalez-Neira acted as the go-between for Mehdi and Talavera by taking and forwarding orders, transferring funds, and falsifying documents. This was a violation of Title 31, Code of Federal Regulations, Section 594.201; Executive Order 13224; Title 50, United States Code, Section 1705; and Title 18, United States Code, Section 2.

In addition to working with his close allies, Mehdi wanted to expand his business by joining Business to Business (B2B) sites like tradeboss.com, which allowed him to buy imported merchandise from around the world and sell it in his store.

Raising Money Like Venture Capitalists

Al Qaeda has become the most well-known terrorist organization in the world because of the 9/11 attacks. Osama bin Laden, who was trained in Afghanistan to fight the Russian occupation, decided to create his own extremist group, which would later become al Qaeda. By August 1988, bin Laden was clearly its leader (emir). This organization’s structure included in its operating arms an intelligence component, a military committee, a financial committee, a political committee, and a committee in charge of media affairs and propaganda. It also had an advisory council (shura) made up of bin Laden’s inner circle.
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Bin Laden’s vast number of offices located around the world covertly provided financial support for terrorist activities. The network included a major business enterprise in Cyprus; a services brand in Zagret; an office of the Benevolence International Foundation in Sarajevo, which supported the Bosnian Muslims in their conflict with Serbia and Croatia; and a nongovernmental organization (NGO) in Baku, Azerbaijan. The Egyptian Islamic Jihad used it as a source and consultant for finances and as a support center for the Muslim rebels in Chechnya. Bin Laden also made use of the already-established Third World Relief Agency (TWRA) headquartered in Vienna, whose branch office locations included Zagreb and Budapest. (Bin Laden later set up an NGO in Nairobi as a cover for operatives there.
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