Hezbollah

by Levitt, Matthew

Al-Manar’s list of offenses included transferring funds to supporters in the United States. In 2006, two New Yorkers were arrested for supporting Hezbollah by conspiring to broadcast al-Manar programming to US customers. In exchange for thousands of dollars from al-Manar, Javed Iqbal and Saleh Elahwal allegedly provided satellite transmission services to al-Manar through the then–New York-based satellite transmission company HDTV Ltd.129 In late 2005, Elahwal emailed a representative of al-Manar offering HDTV’s services to broadcast the station in North and South America; within a month he would travel to Beirut to sign a contract with Hezbollah. Throughout 2005 and 2006, al-Manar wired funds to HDTV’s bank account through a Manhattan bank. Subsequently, Iqbal and Elahwal shipped satellite receivers to al-Manar TV in Beirut and confirmed, in emails to al-Manar representatives, that HDTV would begin broadcasting al-Manar.130 Ultimately, Iqbal and Elahwal were sentenced to sixty-nine and seventeen months, respectively, for providing material support to Hezbollah.131

  Operation Bell Bottoms

  Across the county, investigations into petty criminal activities, including food stamp fraud, misuse of grocery coupons, and sale of unlicensed T-shirts, have led to criminal fundraising plots tied to Hezbollah. As of 2002, US officials believed “a substantial portion” of the estimated hundreds of millions of dollars raised by Hezbollah and other Middle Eastern terrorist groups comes from the $20 to $30 million annually brought in by the illicit scam industry in America.132

  In November 2007, after a two-year investigation centered on the Los Angeles garment district, a multiagency task force arrested a dozen suspects on narcotics trafficking, sale of counterfeit goods, and money laundering. The investigation, dubbed Operation Bell Bottoms, culminated in arrests of Ali Khalil Elreda and his associates. Elreda was detained at the Los Angeles International Airport attempting to smuggle $123,000 in money orders and cashier’s checks to Lebanon stuffed in a child’s toy.133

  While public announcements about the November arrests made no mention of a terrorism connection, several sources close to the Elreda investigation claimed the ring smuggled criminal proceeds to Hezbollah. According to a Department of Justice press release, officers seized thirty kilograms of cocaine and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of counterfeit clothing during the investigation.134 As a source told the press, “this was a classic case of terrorism financing, and it was pretty sophisticated how they did it.”135 In fact, while the case originated with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD), it was turned over to the FBI when the terrorism angle became clear.136 Focusing on a group of Lebanese immigrants living in the Los Angeles suburb of Bell, investigators noted certain local families had relatives who had fought (and died) with Hezbollah in the July 2006 war.137

  In October 2006, a private trademark investigator contacted the LASD about an ongoing investigation of Hip Hop Connections, a retail store in Los Angeles County. In coordination with the LASD, the investigator arranged to purchase a large number of Nike shoes from Mohammad Khalil Elreda, whose brother Ali owned the store. The shoes were sent to Nike for a detailed examination and determined to be counterfeit. Los Angeles law enforcement soon discovered that Ali Elreda was on felony probation for dealing counterfeit goods.138

  Two years earlier, another private investigator identified several counterfeit jerseys, T-shirts, and pairs of sweatpants at Hip Hop Connections over several visits. When investigators returned to the store to serve Ali Elreda a cease-and-desist notice in April 2004, he agreed to turn over the counterfeit items. According to investigative reports, however, Ali’s sister arrived as investigators inventoried the counterfeit goods and belligerently insisted they were genuine. A few months after this incident, the LASD arrested Ali Elreda for selling counterfeit goods and seized $16,060 worth of retail items. A weapons charge was added when police found a handgun in a front-counter cabinet and a semiautomatic rifle in a storeroom.139

  Counterfeiting crimes by Hezbollah supporters predate the Elreda group’s arrest, as affirmed in a 2005 congressional hearing by John Stedman of the LASD, who recounted two notable instances in particular. In one instance, during a search of a suspect’s home in which thousands of dollars in counterfeit clothing were seized, Stedman saw small Hezbollah flags displayed next to a photograph of Nasrallah. When Stedman identified Nasrallah in the photo, the suspect’s wife said, “We love him because he protects us from the Jews.” Also in the home were dozens of audiotapes of Nasrallah’s speeches and a locket containing Nasrallah’s picture. In 2004, while serving a search warrant at a Los Angeles County clothing store, detectives recovered thousands of dollars in counterfeit clothing and two unregistered firearms. The suspect was found to have a tattoo of the Hezbollah flag when he was booked into custody.140

  The financial rewards from petty crime like counterfeiting can be immense, but the practice makes it difficult for a criminal network to use traditional banking practices. In a Los Angeles case, investigators discovered more than $800,000 in cash throughout the suspect’s home, hidden under the bed in trash bags and stashed in trash cans and the attic, with over $10,000 in a child’s piggy bank. In another case US Customs officers at Los Angeles International Airport stopped a Lebanon-bound woman with $230,000 in cash strapped to her body. The woman told the customs officers that she was heading to Lebanon for vacation. According to Stedman, authorities learned that the woman owned a chain of cigarette shops and seized more than a thousand cartons of counterfeit cigarettes and an additional $70,000 in cash, along with funds from wire transfers to banks throughout the world.141

  “Take Down an F-16”

  Bragging to a government informant about his ties to Hezbollah, Mahmoud Kourani once let it slip that a few years before he had entered the country, another Hezbollah supporter named Mohammed Krayem had sent money to his brother, the Hezbollah military commander, to fund the purchase of military equipment from members of the United Nations Protection Forces in Lebanon.142 In other cases, however, Hezbollah procurement agents sought to purchase weapons and military equipment in North America. Mohammad Dbouk and his associates in Canada focused on dual-use items (discussed in chapter 6), but others sought far more lethal equipment.

  A case in April 2006 showed how sometimes the best leads come from the most unlikely places. In that affair a tipster reported to the Philadelphia police that at odd hours, suspicious-looking Middle Eastern men were loading carpet into white work vans with Michigan plates.143 This particular tip was not given high priority, but when a state police detective assigned to the FBI’s JTTF looked into the matter, a link to Hezbollah suspects involved in stolen property transactions piqued his interest. The investigation quickly led from a Hezbollah criminal enterprise in suburban Philadelphia to Dani Tarraf, a German-Lebanese procurement agent for Hezbollah with homes in Lebanon and Slovakia and significant business interests in China and Lebanon.144

  Members of the Philadelphia JTTF introduced Sadek Koumaiha, one of the suspected Lebanese crooks, to an undercover officer posing as someone who could fence stolen goods, but Koumaiha and his crew never took to him. After a period of time the JTTF switched him out and inserted a new undercover officer with whom Koumaiha started doing business. Soon Sadek’s cousin from Detroit, Hassan Koumaiha, called the undercover officer asking to be cut in on his cousin’s deal but without his cousin’s knowledge. With that, a massive Hezbollah criminal fundraising and weapons procurement case was all but delivered to investigators on a silver platter.145

  Throughout the investigation Sadek Koumaiha and his co-conspirators engaged in a proactive fencing scheme buying and selling stolen and counterfeit property, laundering money, and more. But Sadek was more of a small-time crook than a terrorist financier, which explains why he and his network were indicted separately, not on terrorism charges. And yet hundreds of thousands of dollars were at stake in his schemes, involving, among other products, thousands of stolen cellular phones, hundreds of stolen Sony PlayStation 2 systems and laptops, and thousands of pairs of counterfeit N
ike sneakers. Sadek also laundered funds presented as proceeds of criminal activity. The undercover agent gave him a McDonald’s paper bag stuffed with more than $50,000, which Sadek was to launder for a fee of a few thousand dollars.146

  Meanwhile, Sadek’s cousin Hassan and others bought what they believed to be stolen property from the undercover agent and sent the merchandise to destinations as diverse as Michigan, California, Paraguay, Brazil, Slovakia, Belgium, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. The money for these purchases came from Dani Tarraf, with whom the undercover agent met in Slovakia twice, in May and September 2008, and who wasted little time before asking whether the agent could supply guided missiles and 10,000 commando machine guns from the United States.147

  In his meeting with the undercover agent, Tarraf expressed interest in a wide array of weapons needed, he explained, for urban fighting. Tarraf’s wish list was long but focused, including M4 rifles and parts like specialized ninety-round magazines, Glock pistols, and antiaircraft and antitank missiles. Tarraf sought to impress the undercover agent, showing him around his Slovakian storage and shipping network and introducing him to his shipper, who would mislabel the weapons as “spare parts” before sending them on to Hezbollah. When Tarraf visited the United States in March 2009, the JTTF and its member agencies put on a similar show, giving him a tour of a fake criminal network capable of procuring many of the weapons Tarraf sought for Hezbollah through his company, Power Express. Law enforcement officers concluded that Power Express essentially “operated as a subsidiary of Hezbollah’s technical procurement wing.”148

  Meeting in Philadelphia in June 2009, Tarraf was very clear about why he wanted these guided and shoulder-fired missiles: they had to be able to target helicopters and “take down an F-16.” Tarraf showed the undercover agent exact weapons specifications on the internet as the FBI taped the conversations and captured the computer search records. Within weeks, Tarraf and the undercover agent met in Philadelphia again, where Tarraf paid the agent a $20,000 deposit toward the purchase of Stinger missiles and 10,000 Colt M4 machine guns. Tarraf noted that the weapons should be exported to Latakia, Syria, where Hezbollah controlled the entire port. Secrecy would be guaranteed there, because Hezbollah could shut down all the cameras when the shipment arrived. No shipping paperwork would be required once the items arrived in Syria, he promised.149

  In November 2009, Tarraf visited the United States one last time to inspect the missiles and machine guns the undercover agent had procured for him. The FBI photographed Tarraf posing with a machine gun, looking down its sight as if he were about to shoot, and then again a few minutes later holding a shoulder-fired missile launcher. Sunglasses perched atop his shaved head, Tarraf looked like a man who had held weapons before.150 On November 21, 2009, Tarraf was arrested on terrorism and other charges and quickly confessed in full, admitting to being a Hezbollah member, receiving military training from the group, and “working with others to acquire massive quantities of weapons for the benefit of Hezbollah.”151

  Major Case 251: Penetrating Hezbollah’s Inner Core

  Dani Tarraf and his co-conspirators were investigated as part of the interconnected Major Case 251. The four-year investigation led to the indictment of twenty-six individuals, including Tarraf and a slew of senior Hezbollah officials and operatives from locales ranging from Philadelphia and New York to Venezuela’s Margarita Island to deep into the Dahiya, Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut. Juggling these cases—running multiple human sources and undercover officers at once—challenged the interagency team and caused tension between field agents and headquarters supervisors struggling to keep up with the paperwork. Often, the paperwork and approval processes lagged far behind the natural flow of the operation, which slowed matters to a pencil-pusher tempo.152

  Given Tarraf’s global contacts, investigators saw him as the most valuable target of their operation. But their next priority was Dib Harb, the son-in-law of senior Hezbollah official Hassan Hodroj and a close associate of Hezbollah militant Hasan Karaki. While an undercover agent worked to build Tarraf’s trust, an FBI source worked another angle of the case, building rapport with a naturalized US citizen from Lebanon who was knee deep in petty crime but also well connected to senior Hezbollah officials. Moussa Ali Hamdan was among the men moving carpets that night in April 2006, which is a little ironic given that he would later advise members of his criminal conspiracy to load their vans quickly to avoid being “exposed” to law enforcement. But Hamdan was likely already on investigators’ radar; he had become a US citizen around 2005 by marrying an American woman who was arrested as part of the investigation into the Charlotte Hezbollah cell. Before moving to New Jersey, Hamdan lived in Dearborn, Michigan.153

  On a cold winter day in late 2007, Moussa Hamdan pulled his high-end SUV into the parking lot of the Deptford Mall, the largest shopping mall in southern New Jersey, located just about twelve miles across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. The lunchtime meeting he would attend was his first with a fellow criminal who promised to deliver a reliable flow of bulk stolen goods—cell phones, laptops, game consoles, and automobiles—that Hamdan could resell for a nice personal profit. According to investigators, Hamdan smuggled some of the contraband into “a worldwide Hezbollah black market.” Afraid of reselling stolen electronic goods in the United States due to tracking numbers stamped on the items, Hamdan and his co-defendants exported them to colleagues in Lebanon and a partner in Venezuela. The profit margins were such that they made about $12,000 moving 300 Sony PlayStations.154

  But Hamdan’s new supplier was actually an FBI source, who helped authorities unwind an extensive international Hezbollah network. Within weeks of their meeting, Hamdan started buying what he believed to be stolen property from the source. From January 2008 through May 2009, Hamdan and his associates purchased and transported 400 PlayStation 2 game systems, 1,781 cell phones, 3 cars, and 142 laptop computers. At the same time, they trafficked in counterfeit goods, moving 5,212 pairs of fake Nike sneakers and 334 knockoff sports jerseys.155

  As the illicit business relationship between the two men grew, Moussa Hamdan introduced the FBI source to the Beirut-based Hezbollah official Dib Hani Harb. Hamdan had to get approval from his brother, a more senior operative, for the source to meet Harb, but once approved Hamdan vouched for the source as someone who could help Hezbollah sell counterfeit currency. In a conversation with the source, Harb explained that Iran produces high-quality counterfeit US and other currencies in facilities staffed by people working eighteen hours a day to crank out the fake bills for Hezbollah’s use. The program is run by Iranian officials, Harb added, so Hezbollah officials would need approval to sell the source this particular type of high-quality counterfeit currency. At another point Harb clarified that the currency printer was located not in Iran but in Hezbollah’s stronghold in Baalbek, Lebanon. The necessary approvals apparently came through, because two months later Hamdan and the source were hashing out the details of a deal for $1 million in counterfeit US currency to be sold at around forty cents to the dollar. But when Hezbollah officials in Lebanon sent sample counterfeit notes to the source for inspection, something strange happened.156

  Secreted in the inside cover of a photo album the source received in the mail in October 2008 were two $100 bills. The source provided the bills to his JTTF handlers, who passed them on to the US Secret Service, which unexpectedly found the bills to be genuine US currency. Law enforcement officers thought Hezbollah was trying to scam the source by passing off genuine bills as extremely high-end forgeries and then providing low-end forgeries when the deal actually came through. In fact, Hezbollah suddenly had an acute interest in dumping a stockpile of genuine currency stolen by Hezbollah supporters around the world. In support of its international terrorist activities, Hezbollah had a program in place through which Hezbollah supporters sent stolen currency to Iran for later use by Imad Mughniyeh and members of Hezbollah’s IJO. The use of genuine, albeit stolen, currency instead of even high
-end counterfeit bills was implemented to ensure operational security for Hezbollah’s most sensitive activities. But in the wake of Mughniyeh’s assassination in Damascus in February 2008, Hezbollah feared these bills might be traceable after all. Perhaps they were even part of the intelligence failure that led Hezbollah’s enemies to Mughniyeh. As part of the damage assessment and counterintelligence investigation that followed Mughniyeh’s death, a decision was made to sell the stockpile of stolen money.157

  So it was in early December 2008, just about a week after Moussa Hamdan and the source met outside Philadelphia to discuss plans for the sale of counterfeit bills, that the source found himself on the phone with Dib Harb in Beirut discussing plans to buy stolen currency at a rate of about sixty-five cents to the dollar. The scene was now set for a meeting in person to firm up the relationships underpinning the source’s illicit dealings with Hezbollah. After receiving another photo album containing a new batch of stolen currency, the source traveled to Beirut in mid-February to meet Harb’s boss, Hasan Antar Karaki, who seemed at ease, unguardedly discussing Hezbollah and his own ties to the group. Hezbollah has access to data from an Iranian satellite, Karaki casually explained, which is capable of providing Hezbollah pictures of any place in Israel. Iran provides specialized military training for Hezbollah protection details, he continued, boasting that one of his brothers was responsible for all security in the Hezbollah-dominated Dahiya neighborhood in Beirut.158

  The Karakis, according to US officials, are a family renowned for being “excellent fighters, crooks, and document forgers.” The fighting component is emphasized by several Karaki brothers’ adoption of the middle name Antar, a reference to an Arabian warrior-poet. Although known more as a crime family than a backer of any particular group, several Karakis have put their skills to use on behalf of Hezbollah. Aside from Hasan and his brother, the Dahiya security chief, there is Ali Mohammad Karaki, who—right around the time Hasan Karaki was scheming to sell counterfeit and stolen currencies in the United States—was arrested in Azerbaijan, where he was planning a Hezbollah attack in revenge for the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh. A physically imposing man, Hasan Karaki is reportedly just as big of a braggart. According to law enforcement officials, he reportedly claimed that the FBI, Interpol, and even Lebanese law enforcement are all “after him.” Lebanese undercover police once came to his house to arrest him, he claimed further, but he fought them off. Several reportedly left on stretchers.159