DAR AL HARB - U.S.A.: MORTGAGE FRAUD, ECONOMIC JIHAD, FUNDS THE JIHAD & BANKRUPTS THE INFIDEL

Mortgage Fraud Funding Jihad?
By Patrick Poole

A man arrested in December at the Kansas City airport with $70,000 in his bulging pockets while trying to board a Southwest Airlines flight claiming the money was actually Muslim prayer books, a San Francisco mortgage company executive who went on the run from the FBI in November, seven people arrested in September in Salt Lake City with ties to al-Qaeda, and a co-defendant in the Sami al-Arian/Palestinian Islamic Jihad trial all have one thing in common – the growing trend of terrorist associations with mortgage fraud rings in the US.
Financial experts say that mortgage fraud has become the fastest growing type of white-collar crime, and terrorist organizations have been quick to jump on the trend. But what concerns federal authorities is how regularly mortgage fraud is showing up in terrorism investigations.

In the past year, several high-profile mortgage fraud arrests have been tied to federal terrorism investigations, most notably a ring busted up in Salt Lake City that is alleged to have direct ties to the late al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Federal agents have been trying to track the hundreds of thousands of dollars illegally obtained by Sharif Omar and his associates in the mortgage fraud ring. At least $40,000 was transferred to an account in Jordan. From there, federal officials believe that money went to Sharif’s brother, Shawqi Omar, who was seized in a raid by US forces in Iraq in October 2004 and is accused of working for al-Zarqawi’s terrorist network in Baghdad. Shawqi Omar is still in US military custody.

...


Read the whole thing...


Pertinent Links:

1) Mortgage Fraud Funding Jihad?

2) FrontPageMag.com