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| Officials seek terror link in $12M in fake checks |
| 2002-07-19 |
| Omar Shishani, 47, of Dearborn, was arrested Wednesday night at Detroit Metro Airport after getting off a flight from Indonesia. Customs agents found the nine counterfeit cashier's checks during a search of his luggage. The checks supposedly were issued by a Pomona, Calif., branch of West America Bank. The bank doesn't have an office there. Two checks were issued for $500,000 each, two for $5 million each, and five for $200,000 each. Six checks were dated in June and three others were dated for September. The bogus checks read "Cashier's Check" rather than "Official Check," which appears on the bank's genuine version. The checks have drawn the attention of the U.S. Attorney's Anti-Terrorism Task Force, which is trying to determine whether there are terrorist links. Twelve million bucks buys a lot of food processing equipment... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #1 This WaPo Update says he's a US ciizen (naturalized), born in Jordan and of Chechen descent. He was picked up because his name appears on a watch list of people trained in Afghanistan by al Qaeda. Shishani's name turned up in documents captured in Afghanistan. What’s intriguing is the way that he was going to wring some cash from those checks. Any bank will put some sort of hold on a cashier’s check. He might have figured that with an existing account he could ask for perhaps a third or a quarter right away, but they’d be after him in a day or two. Perhaps he was going to sell them for pennies on the dollar on the black market. |
| Posted by: Mike Cakora 2002-07-20 08:28:20 |