Federal authorities yesterday indicted 39 people, including several Pakistani operators of convenience stores on Maryland's Eastern Shore, on charges that they tried to bribe public officials and operated unlicensed money-transferring businesses that dispatched cash for illegal activities around the world.
One of the defendants, Saifullah Ranjha, who lives in Laurel, was also charged with attempting to finance a terrorist organization, al-Qaida.
The indictments were the result of a sting operation called Operation Cash-Out that began four years ago in Maryland and spread its tentacles to several countries, including Canada, Spain, Belgium, Britain and Australia, as well as to Wisconsin, New York and New Jersey.
As part of the sting, investigators set up a bogus import-export company and posed as public officials who they said could help some of the defendants become legal residents of the United States in exchange for large amounts of money.
In all, the indictment says, the suspects illegally used more than $5 million provided by undercover agents.
During a news conference yesterday in Baltimore, Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said most of the defendants were in custody, at least 16 of them in Maryland. Another two were arrested yesterday in Spain, he said, while another half-dozen -- including one in Canada and another in Belgium -- are still being sought.
On Wednesday night, six suspects who are not named in the indictment were arrested in a sting operation. He said the trials for all the defendants will take place in Maryland.
"These are carefully choreographed investigations," said Rosenstein, flanked by officials from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service, all of which worked in concert with law enforcement agencies in the other countries involved. "Our goal is to send a pretty strong message, that we'll disrupt these operations and that these money pipelines are being monitored," Rosenstein said
In most cases, the alleged money-laundering schemes involved using hawala, a system under which funds are transferred from one place to another -- often to different countries -- through an informal network of people using codes.
Although the system is not in itself illegal, U.S. law demands that large money transfers to overseas locations be reported to federal officials and that such businesses have commercial licenses. Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the hawala system has been suspected of playing a role in financing some terrorist activities.
