Your milk and bread money going to Hizballah. “N.Y. grocers accused of sending money to Hezbollah,” by Michael Zeigler for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle via Newsday, with thanks to Sr. Soph:
ROCHESTER, N.Y. “” Three Yemeni men who run Rochester groceries are accused of illegally sending money overseas in the belief it would benefit the terrorist organization Hezbollah.
Yehia Ali Ahmed Alomari, 26; Mohamed Al Huraibi, 49; and Saleh Mohamed Taher Saeed, 27, were scheduled to appear for a detention hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Marian W. Payson.
But the hearing was postponed for one week for Huraibi and two weeks for Alomari and Saeed to allow their lawyers to investigate whether the defendants’ families can present property to secure their release from custody.
Federal agents who conducted a sting operation charged Alomari, Huraibi and Saeed with conspiring to launder money and laundering monetary instruments for allegedly transferring $200,000 outside the United States after being told the money had been generated by illegal activities and was intended for Hezbollah.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Bret A. Puscheck said none of the money actually made it to Hezbollah, a radical Islamic group the U.S. Department of State designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.
The transferred money was deposited in overseas accounts controlled by the federal government.
Saeed’s lawyer, James J. Rizzo, said his client provides a valuable service to Yemeni immigrants by sending money they earn in the U.S. to relatives still in Yemen.
“My client thinks it’s a misunderstanding, that he did somebody a favor and that no good deed is going unpunished.”
Ain’t it always the way.