“Mr. Ghanem was literally a merchant of death who was ready, willing and able to sell weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, to any paying customer, with zero concern for the death and destruction these weapons might cause,” said U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna, in a news release from the DOJ.
Among Ghanem’s clientele for such missile systems were customers in Libya, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and leaders of Hezbollah, according to federal authorities.
Evidence presented during his trial showed that he brokered the services of mercenary missile operators to a militant faction in Libya in 2015, conspiring to make use of Russian-made Igla and Strela surface-to-air missile systems, according to the DOJ.
He would negotiate the missile operators’ salaries and terms of service — facilitating their travel to Libya, coordinating their payment and offering them “a $50,000 bonus if they were successful in their mission of shooting down airplanes flown by the internationally recognized government of Libya,” the DOJ states in a news release.
US authorities were alerted to Ghanem when he approached an arms dealer in Los Angeles in 2014.
Undercover agents approached him in Athens claiming they wanted to ‘sell’ $200,000 worth of arms. Ghanem claimed to represent Iraq based members of Hizballah [a US designated terrorist group] and clients in Iran.
He was arrested in Greece in 2015 and was later extradited to the United States.
“War makes me happy,” he was quoted saying to an agent a day before his arrest.
Arms trafficker convicted in anti-aircraft missiles scheme and of other arms offenses sentenced to 30 years in prison
LOS ANGELES – A black-market arms dealer with a long history of brokering machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank armaments – and who was found guilty last year in a scheme to sell and use surface-to-air missiles – has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison.
Rami Najm Asad-Ghanem, 53, who was commonly known as Rami Ghanem, a naturalized United States citizen who was living in Egypt at the time of the offenses, was sentenced Monday by U.S. District Judge S. James Otero.
During Monday’s sentencing hearing, Judge Otero said, “The breadth, scope and gravity [of Ghanem’s offenses] is really breathtaking and, in many ways, frightening.”
The investigation in this case was led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Los Angeles, which received substantial assistance from the Department of Defense’s Criminal Investigative Service; the Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Export Enforcement; and the Hellenic National Police; the Hellenic Financial and Economic Crimes Unit; and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Following a nine-day trial last November, a federal jury found Ghanem guilty of conspiring to use and to transfer missile systems designed to destroy aircraft. The day before his trial started, Ghanem pleaded guilty to six other federal crimes stemming from his arms-trafficking activities, including the unlicensed export of weapons and ammunition, smuggling, money laundering, and unlicensed arms brokering.
The evidence presented at last year’s trial showed that Ghanem conspired to transfer a wide array of surface-to-air missile systems to customers around the world, including clients in Libya, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, and the leadership of Hezbollah, a designated foreign terrorist organization. During the trial, prosecutors showed that he conspired to use Russian-made Igla and Strela surface-to-air missile systems by brokering the services of mercenary missile operators to a militant faction in Libya in 2015. Among other actions, Ghanem negotiated the salaries and terms of service of the mercenary missile operators, coordinated their payment, facilitated their travel to Libya, confirmed their arrival and performance of duties, and offered them a $50,000 bonus if they were successful in their mission of shooting down airplanes flown by the internationally recognized government of Libya. In addition to numerous documents that demonstrated Ghanem’s role in the conspiracy, the jury viewed videos of sworn deposition testimony of two missile operators and Ghanem’s fellow arms broker who assisted in procuring their services for this transaction.
“This lengthy sentence is well deserved and, unfortunately, demonstrates the sheer breadth of criminal activity engaged in by those who oppose us,” said Joseph Macias, Special Agent in Charge for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Los Angeles. “Counter-proliferation investigations are the highest priority for HSI – and we remain steadfastly committed to working with our domestic and international law enforcement partners to pursue transnational criminal networks intent on committing acts of terrorism against the United States.”“This defendant brokered a wide array of military-grade weapons, which endangered civilians around the world and put at risk America’s national security interests, including members of our armed services,” said Nick Hanna, U.S. Attorney for the Central District California. “Mr. Ghanem was literally a merchant of death who was ready, willing and able to sell weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, to any paying customer, with zero concern for the death and destruction these weapons might cause. As a result of his conduct, the sentence imposed in this case is appropriate and richly deserved.”
HSI’s Los Angeles Counter-Proliferation Investigations Center began the investigation into Ghanem in mid-2014, when a Los Angeles-based company alerted HSI that it had been solicited to provide military equipment to Ghanem. During an undercover operation, an HSI agent developed a relationship with Ghanem, who was seeking to procure a number of armaments – including sniper rifles and night-vision optics. During discussions with the undercover agent, Ghanem affirmed that the transactions were being conducted “illegally” and had to be “under the table.” During subsequent meetings with the undercover operative in Greece, Ghanem expressed an interest in purchasing helicopters and fighter jets on behalf of Iranian clients, and Ghanem said he had relationships with Hezbollah in Iraq.
Over the course of several months in 2015, Ghanem discussed his interest in purchasing numerous weapons, and in August 2015 placed an order for $220,000 worth of sniper rifles, pistols, silencers, laser sights, ammunition, night-vision googles and other items that were to be shipped to Libya. After making two down payments, Ghanem was arrested on December 8, 2015, in Athens. He was extradited to the United States in April 2016 to face prosecution in this case and has remained in custody without bond since the time of his arrest.
After his arrest, authorities seized numerous digital devices that Ghanem had in his possession. Searches of those devices revealed evidence of other large-scale arms brokering activities, including millions of rounds of ammunition, anti-tank missiles, and the scheme to transfer and use anti-aircraft missiles.
In documents filed in relation to the sentencing hearing, prosecutors offered evidence of a contract documenting Ghanem’s agreement to sell $250 million worth of weapons and ammunition to a militant faction in Libya; a contract between Ghanem and the Egyptian Ministry of Defense dealing with hundreds of rocket-propelled grenade launchers; attempts to buy and sell combat jets and helicopter gunships; and his apparent role in the trafficking of counterfeit currency, looted antiquities and black-market diamonds.
“Protecting America’s warfighters and preserving our national security interests by ensuring that Department of Defense assets and technologies do not end up in the hands of those that seek to do harm to our country or our foreign allies is a critical component of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service’s mission,” said Bryan D. Denny, Special Agent in Charge of the DCIS Western Field Office. “Ghanem’s sentencing reflects the seriousness of the crimes he committed against the United States, and serves as a cautionary tale to others considering or engaging in similar illegal activities. Without question, the exceptional collaboration between the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Homeland Security Investigations, the Office of Export Enforcement, and DCIS led to Ghanem’s successful prosecution and sentencing, despite the inherent complexities in detecting, investigating, and prosecuting illegal international arms-trafficking matters.”
“This sentence is the result of outstanding collaborative investigative work by the Office of Export Enforcement and its law enforcement partners to combat the illegal shipment of sophisticated technology. We will continue to aggressively pursue violators wherever they may be,” said Richard Weir, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Export Enforcement, Los Angeles Field Office.
This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Melissa Mills and George E. Pence IV of the Terrorism and Export Crimes Section in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and by Trial Attorney Christian E. Ford of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section of the Department of Justice’s National Security Division.
Category Archives: Department of Homeland Security
Huge Fentanyl Bust of Retired Deputy and Son
Just an every day common home, except it wasn’t.
Meet Larry McCallister and his son. Enough fentanyl that if it actually hit the streets, an estimated 750,000 people could have died from an overdose. We however do not know the official source that the retired sheriff deputy and his son had to acquire the narcotics. That is a key unanswered question.
Retired Cabell County Deputy Sheriff and Son Indicted on Drug and Gun Charges
1.2 Kilos of Fentanyl Seized
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – United States Attorney Mike Stuart announced that a federal grand jury sitting in Huntington has returned a six count superseding indictment charging Steven Dale McCallister, 45, and his father, Larry McCallister, 76, a retired Cabell County Deputy Sheriff, with various drug and gun crimes. Steven Dale McCallister was arrested on June 12, 2019, at the McCallister home in Barboursville following the execution of a search warrant on the residence. During the search, law enforcement officers seized approximately 1.2 kilograms of fentanyl, 300 grams of methamphetamine, over $8,000 in cash, $4,000 of which was from an earlier undercover purchase of fentanyl. A Smith and Wesson, Model 686, .357 revolver was also seized. Larry McCallister was at home and present during the search.
The superseding indictment charges Steven McCallister with distribution of fentanyl, possession with intent to distribute 400 grams or more of fentanyl, possession with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine, possession of a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking and felon in possession of a firearm. If convicted on all counts, he faces a sentence of 10 years to life in prison. The indictment also seeks forfeiture of approximately $4,040 in U.S. Currency, the seized firearm and a 2007 Cadillac.
Larry McCallister is charged in the superseding indictment with maintaining a drug-involved premises and aiding and abetting the possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine. If convicted on all charges, he faces a sentence of 5 to 40 years in prison.
“This is a significant case on many levels and a substantial event for the greater Huntington region,” said United States Attorney Mike Stuart. “Had the fentanyl in this case hit the streets, potentially more than 750,000 people could have lost their lives to overdose. Massive quantities of fentanyl. Massive quantities of methamphetamine. And a gun. All of this incredibly heinous activity was based out of a normal house on a normal street in Barboursville. There was nothing special about this house in this typical neighborhood, in this All-American town, except that it was a haven for the poisons of death and the home of a retired Cabell County Deputy Sheriff.”
The investigation was conducted by members of the Metropolitan Drug Enforcement Network Team (MDENT), the U.S. Department of Homeland Security – Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the Violent Crime and Drug Task Force West and the West Virginia State Police. Assistant United States Attorney R. Gregory McVey is prosecuting the case.
Sex Trafficking Ring Bust(s)
This sounds real familiar. You know that case that snared Patriots owner Robert Kraft in South Florida?
Last October, the President hosted a meeting of the Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Not only is this a domestic issue, it is worldwide. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo held a briefing on the matter.
So how about liberal media reporting some of the domestic successes? Anyone? Well read on.
PANAMA CITY, Fla. (WDHN) — A joint-investigation performed by Panama City Police and the FBI has ended with the arrest of a Pensacola man and the dismantling of a human trafficking ring.
The investigation began in 2017 when investigators sent a confidential informant into a massage business at 1800 Beck Avenue. Once inside, an Asian woman offered to perform sexual acts on the informant for more money, investigators wrote.
As the investigation continued, officers learned that the business was owned by 41-year-old David Williams of Pensacola.
Late last week, Williams was arrested and charged with using interstate facilities for purposes of racketeering, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and the harboring of illegal aliens for commercial advantage or private financial gain.
The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Pennsylvania State Police, and Pittsburgh FBI led the investigation into the organization’s operations in Pennsylvania and, on Thursday, executed nine search warrants in Turtle Creek, Carnegie, Jeannette, Bridgeville, Erie, and McKees Rock. Agents in Florida also executed multiple federal search warrants in Pensacola, Gulf Breeze, and Gainesville.
The charges allege that Williams was exploiting undocumented women and offering sexual acts for money during massages at his parlors. The investigation originated from a tip received by the National Human Trafficking Hotline. The investigation remains ongoing.
“The defendant allegedly used his businesses to exploit women in several different states and force them into prostitution purely to line his own pockets,” Attorney General Josh Shapiro said. “Thanks to strong collaboration with our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners, we have put an end to this criminal enterprise and are seeking justice for the defendant’s victims.”
Operation Independence Day:
Video Transcript
DeKalb County Police Detective: The DeKalb County Vice Unit, which is a part of the FBI MATCH Task Force, will be conducting an Operation Independence Day, which is an ongoing operation for the entire month of July.
The objective of the operation is to identify potential victims—underage females or males—who are forced into sexually explicit activities. The objective also is to rescue, recover, and provide all available resources for the victims who are exploited. So that’s what we are focusing on today in reference to trying to locate underage females and giving them help. Because they are victims. So we’re not going to treat them as suspects.
Jeanette Milazzo, Special Agent, Houston FBI: What you see here specifically related the Houston Field Office is a partnership with the Houston Police Department and the Fort Bend County Precinct 3 Constable’s Office.
We have undercover officers here who are helping us out on various social media sites and escort sites looking for runaways, looking for essentially juveniles who have been posting themselves for commercial sex.
Once they make contact with that juvenile—and sometimes adult victims—then they will make a fake date with them wherein they’ll be intercepted at a predetermined location and brought back to this location where they will be interviewed and then provided services if they so request, and then transported to the hospital for a forensic examination.
We are here to rescue children and we are here to build good cases against traffickers. If we have developed enough rapport with the victim, we will build a case against their trafficker and hopefully charge them in federal court.
Radio Voice: Just make sure we don’t have any cars visible in that area.
Radio: We parked on the south side. I’m going to see if we can get him to walk over here.
Radio: He’s almost to our car, so if you want to roll up here, that’s fine.
Victim Specialist: Do they know anything at all about you being online? They know about you being online? Have you been pretty open with them?
Anne Darr, Victim Specialist, Denver FBI: A lot of the operations that we do also include social media operations. And typically what we see is underage minor boys who are engaging in unsafe methods online where they agree to meet for a date in exchange for money or anything of value.
And so it’s important that we intervene and that we provide education, awareness, and resources to them. So that way they don’t go back online and could meet somebody who could be an online predator.
Radio Voice: We’re on the south side of 7-Eleven.
Darr: What they essentially are doing is extremely dangerous. You never know who you’re going to meet on the other end. It could be a pimp. It could be an online predator. Somebody that’s going to exploit them, who could essentially rape them, take their money, do whatever to harm them.
So, we want to make sure that we’re intervening and doing that outreach to them.
Local/National Politicians Expanding Narcotics Crisis
Do you realize under these programs, governments are actually buyers/customers of unlawful narcotics. State and local governments are essentially becoming a legal drug cartel. Read on to see how this works.
A week after President Donald Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health experts and the Clinton Foundation released a report with suggestions for curbing the epidemic that’s killing 90 Americans each day.
Among the collaboration’s top recommendations was a progressive suggestion: establishing “safe consumption sites” ― centers where drug users can go to consume or inject their drugs in a medically supervised environment. More here.
Boston Globe: US Senator Bernie Sanders released a criminal justice reform plan Sunday that includes proposals to legalize marijuana, expunge past cannabis convictions, and provide for safe injection sites to combat the opioid crisis.
The 2020 Democratic presidential candidate emphasized racially disparate arrest rates for marijuana and said that such disparities “pervade every aspect of the criminal justice system.”
“When Bernie is president, we will finally make the deep and structural investments to rebuild the communities that mass incarceration continues to decimate,” his campaign website states.
A key component of the senator’s comprehensive proposal is changing federal drug laws and treating addiction as a mental health issue.
According to an outline of the plan, if elected president, Sanders will legalize marijuana while ensuring that revenue from cannabis sales are reinvested in communities “hit hardest by the War on Drugs.”
Sanders discussed aspects of his criminal justice reform vision at a campaign event in South Carolina where he addressed the cash bail system and drug criminalization. A tweet with video from the event points out that people continue to linger in prison due to high bail costs, including for simple marijuana possession arrests, while adults in legal states are able to “get marijuana delivered to your home.”
***
But it is really worse than that at the local level. Injection sites already exist threatening public safety.
Seattle has injection sites and local government is considering expanding the program at taxpayer expense. Get that? Everyday citizens taxes are paying for banned narcotics use.
Community Health Engagement Locations” (CHEL), in King County: one in Seattle and one outside of Seattle, “reflecting the geographic distribution of drug use in other King County areas.” The CHEL sites would provide supervised consumption of illicit drugs for adults with substance abuse disorders in addition to a number of other services:
- Hygienic space and sterile supplies
- Overdose treatment and prevention
- Rapid linkage to medication-assisted treatment, detox services and outpatient/inpatient treatment services
- Direct provision or linkage to basic medical treatment, wraparound social services and case management
- Syringe exchange services
- Sexual health resources and supplies
- Health education
- Peer support
- Post-consumption observation plan
Remember, we just had a recent shooting in Philadelphia in a neighborhood infested with drug use. And the Mayor is more concerned with how the several times convicted felon got all that firepower when the city has this other long term/growing issue. So what does he do?
The mayor of the city hit hardest by the opioid epidemic in the United States was in Vancouver last week to learn from police and harm reduction workers how injection sites have saved lives of drug users.
Jim Kenney of Philadelphia — a city of 1.6 million people that recorded 1,116 drug deaths last year — said he wanted to see first-hand what Vancouver’s experience is with injection sites and how the service intersects with community and law enforcement.
Like British Columbia, which has a population of five million and saw 1,535 people die of an overdose last year, the majority of drug deaths in Philadelphia have been linked to fentanyl, the deadly synthetic opioid.
Why is fentanyl so prevalent in Philadelphia?
“I have no idea,” Kenney said. “If I knew, I would tell the U.S. attorney’s office to go get [whoever brought it to Philadelphia] and have the FBI arrest them.”
And the idiot Democrat Larry Krasner, the front-runner to become Philadelphia’s next district attorney, says he supports city-sanctioned spaces where people addicted to heroin can inject drugs under medical supervision and access treatment, a move advocates see as a promising step toward making the city the first in the U.S. to open such a site.
What about San Francisco and New York or Denver?
Denver
Well in 2018, the Justice Department is threatening to shut down San Francisco’s proposed test of supervised injection sites amid the opioid crisis even before the governor has a chance to sign the pilot program into law.
The looming showdown could affect similar efforts in New York, Philadelphia and Seattle, where officials have grappled with the ramifications of setting up spaces where drug users could shoot up while gaining access to clean syringes, medical professionals and treatment services as an approach to curb opioid addiction and overdose deaths.
Just the facts and there are more. What the hell are we doing in America and is this giving us a generational failure?
35 North Korean cyberattacks in 17 countries
According to a South Korean politician, last fall North Korean hackers gained access to South Korea’s Defense Integrated Data Center and stole 235 gigabytes of classified military plans. More here.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — U.N. experts say they are investigating at least 35 instances in 17 countries of North Koreans using cyberattacks to illegally raise money for weapons of mass destruction programs — and they are calling for sanctions against ships providing gasoline and diesel to the country.
Last week, The Associated Press quoted a summary of a report from the experts which said that North Korea illegally acquired as much as $2 billion from its increasingly sophisticated cyber activities against financial institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges.
The lengthier version of the report, recently seen by the AP, reveals that neighboring South Korea was hardest-hit, the victim of 10 North Korean cyberattacks, followed by India with three attacks, and Bangladesh and Chile with two each.
Thirteen countries suffered one attack — Costa Rica, Gambia, Guatemala, Kuwait, Liberia, Malaysia, Malta, Nigeria, Poland, Slovenia, South Africa, Tunisia and Vietnam, it said.
The experts said they are investigating the reported attacks as attempted violations of U.N. sanctions, which the panel monitors.
The report cites three main ways that North Korean cyber hackers operate:
—Attacks through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication or SWIFT system used to transfer money between banks, “with bank employee computers and infrastructure accessed to send fraudulent messages and destroy evidence.”
—Theft of cryptocurrency “through attacks on both exchanges and users.”
— And “mining of cryptocurrency as a source of funds for a professional branch of the military.”
The experts stressed that implementing these increasingly sophisticated attacks “is low risk and high yield,” often requiring just a laptop computer and access to the internet.
The report to the Security Council gives details on some of the North Korean cyberattacks as well as the country’s successful efforts to evade sanctions on coal exports in addition to imports of refined petroleum products and luxury items including Mercedes Benz S-600 cars.
One Mercedes Maybach S-Class limousine and other S-600s, as well as a Toyota Land Cruiser, were transferred from North Korea to Vietnam for last February’s summit between the country’s leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump, the experts said, adding that Vietnam said it asked for but was never provided a list of vehicles being brought into the country.
The panel also said it obtained information that the Taesong Department Store in Pyongyang, which reopened in April and is selling luxury goods, is part of the Taesong Group which includes two entities under U.N. sanctions and was previously linked to procurement for North Korea’s ballistic missile programs.
The panel recommended sanctions against six North Korean vessels for evading sanctions and illegally carrying out ship-to-ship transfers of refined petroleum products.
Under U.N. sanctions, North Korea is limited to importing 500,000 barrels of such products annually including gasoline and diesel. The U.S. and 25 other countries said North Korea exceeded the limit in the first four months of 2019.
The panel also recommended sanctions against the captain, owner, and parent company of the North Korean-flagged Wise Honest, which was detained by Indonesia in April 2018 with an illegal shipment of coal.
As for North Korea’s military cooperation with other countries, the experts said Iran rejected an unnamed country’s allegation that two North Korean entities under sanctions maintained offices in Iran — the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation known as KOMID, which is the country’s primary arms dealer and main exporter of goods and equipment related to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons, and Saeng Pil Company.
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As examples of North Korean cyberattacks, the panel said hackers in one unnamed country accessed the infrastructure managing its entire ATM system and installed malware modifying the way transactions are processed. As a result, it forced 10,000 cash distributions to individuals working for or on behalf of North Korea “across more than 20 countries in five hours.”
In Chile, the experts said, North Korean hackers demonstrated “increasing sophistication in social engineering,” by using LinkedIn to offer a job to an employee of the Chilean interbank network Redbanc, which connects the ATMs of all the country’s banks.
According to a report from one unnamed country cited by the experts, stolen funds following one cryptocurrency attack in 2018 “were transferred through at least 5,000 separate transactions and further routed to multiple countries before eventual conversion” to currency that a government has declared legal money, “making it highly difficult to track the funds.”
In South Korea, the experts said, North Korean cyber actors shifted focus in 2019 to targeting cryptocurrency exchanges, some repeatedly.
The panel said South Korea’s Bithumb, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, was reportedly attacked at least four times. It said the first two attacks in February 2017 and July 2017 each resulted in losses of approximately $7 million, while a June 2018 attack led to a $31 million loss and a March 2019 attack to a $20 million loss.
The panel said it also investigated instances of “cryptojacking” in which malware is used to infect a computer to illicitly use its resources to generate cryptocurrency. It said one report analyzed a piece of malware designed to mine the cryptocurrency Monero “and send any mined currency to servers located at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang.”