Counterterrorism Blog

Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, 53, a.k.a. "Michael Mixon," a businessman and self-described "peace advocate" in New York, was indicted yesterday on multiple felony counts, including financing terrorism, material support of terrorism, and money laundering. You can download and read the entire indictment from here. With respect to the terrorism charges, Alishtari was indicted of sending $152,000 to Pakistan and Afghanistan to support a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan by funding the purchase of night-vision goggles, and of laundering $25,000 from a New York bank through a bank in Montreal as part of the funding scheme. But he was also indicted for allegedly running a six-year-long scheme through which he and unnamed others "fraudulently obtained millions of dollars in investmentsfrom various individuals by falsely promising high, guaranteed rates of return." According to ABC News, "According to federal sources, Alishtari had agreed to cooperate with investigators but recently had ceased cooperating," so there must be much more to this arrest, and the indictments for investment fraud indicate a potentially much larger terrorist financing scheme.

One question I have is whether the Currency Transaction Report (CTR) that would have been filed with the Treasury Department for the $25,000 transfer, as required by the Bank Secrecy Act, might have played a role in the case. I also wonder whether the NY bank official who executed the transfer filed a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) purusant to the BSA. Dennis Lormel and I have discussed the role of CTRs and SAR's in terrorist financing cases here often, and I recently posted about desired changes to filing mandates. (But see the note at the end of this post from another consultant in this field.)

While researching Alishtari for this post, I found a strange website with a statement on a "Peruvian Forged Gold Bonds Situation," and I have to wonder if there is a link to the case:

"Message From VK Durham Clarifying Peruvian Forged Gold Bonds Situation

Mr. AT Alishtari, the POA and Founder of EDI Secure LLLP, never knew what the Peruvian situation was about and why Messer's Brian Anderson, Gordon Rothwell and Paul Lavoie tried to link him to it. Mr. Alishtari was glad that 2 sites on the Internet independently cleared him from any link to so-called forged Peruvian bonds however the similarity here of forgery for personal gain does make this fall under the ID protection mandate of bloggers seeking to block ID fraud and ID theft in general."

Elsewhere, on an Internet forum, Alishtari described himself as "ex-victim" of identity theft and claims the following, which might also havae a connection to his case: "Mr. Abdul Tawala Alishtari successfully stopped crooks using his good name but they still scammed hundreds of millions USD from innocents victims woldwide from their ID theft trying to blame anyone but themselves for their scams and ID theft done with impunity and hubris. In the specific case, the pertinent government authorities, in that instance, caught one felon who later on admitted his crime in written settlement. That agency, OSC, in Canada sent release letters to Mr. Alishtari's company."

I wish I had time to pursue both of those statements.

Alishtari was no simple businessman; he used his money, in part, to buy a seat at some interesting political tables, all Republican and all after the 9-11 attacks. He made $15,250 in political contributions to GOP entities between April 2002 and the end of 2004 (see the details here). A resume that he posted at MSN Groups boasts of membership in GOP groups open only to high-rollers. It would be interesting to determine which Congressmen and Bush Administration officials met with Alishtari and what they discussed, and whether his companies were awarded major federal government contracts in the past 5 years.

Alishtari has distributed poetry on websites on written on subjects as varied as the dreams and desires of wives and the differences between strains of Islam, and he started a "Global Peace Film Festival." He has had a public persona which belies any long-standing commitment to jihad. It will be interesting to see what might have motivated him towards the allegedly terrorist funding scheme.

UPDATE, Feb. 19 - Brett Wolf, anti-money laundering consultant and writer, sent me the following note about the CTR filed on the $25,000 transfer: "While a compliance officer may well have filed such as BSA document, it seems unlikely that it was significant in the investigation. The reason I say this is that the indictment states that Alishtari 'attempted' to send funds and 'believed' he was funding a terrorist training camp -- language that could have come straight out of a standard laundering sting op. Although the US attorney has not publicly said so, this indictment smells like the product of an FBI sting operation, a possibility made more likely by Alishtari's political background. I would have to do more research to be certain, but at first glance I believe the statutes under which Alishtari is charged contain sting provisions. If this is in fact the case, obviously a sting would not rely on BSA data as the feds would have known the transactions were occurring and simply had to produce a national security letter to obtain the bank records."