Ohio Man Sentenced To 20 Years In Prison For Plot To Attack U.S. Government Officers

The U.S. Justice Department released the below information:

Munir Abdulkader, 22, of West Chester, Ohio, was sentenced to 20 years in prison and lifetime supervised release, for plotting to murder a military base employee and attack a Cincinnati area police station in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security Mary B. McCord, U.S. Attorney Benjamin C. Glassman for the Southern District of Ohio, Special Agent in Charge Angela L. Byers of the FBI’s Cincinnati Field Division, Police Chief Joel Herzog of the West Chester Police Department, Superintendent Colonel Paul A. Pride of the Ohio State Highway Patrol and Police Chief Eliot Isaac of the Cincinnati Police Department announced the sentence handed down today by U.S. District Judge Michael R. Barrett.

“Using social media to communicate with the now-deceased Syria-based ISIL terrorist Junaid Hussain, Abdulkader coordinated and planned violent murders of military members and police officers,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General McCord. “Identifying and stopping such ISIL-directed and inspired plots is and will remain one of our highest priorities.”

“Abdulkader placed himself under the direction and control of an evil foreign terrorist organization and plotted with that organization to conduct multiple murderous attacks in the Cincinnati area,” said U.S. Attorney Glassman.

Abdulkader previously pleaded guilty to attempting to kill officers and U.S. government employees, conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence.

Abdulkader’s plan was to murder a specific employee of a military base at the employee’s home. He planned to videotape the murder so that it could be used in an ISIL propaganda video to further ISIL’s cause. Following the murder, Abdulkader would then launch a violent attack on a police station in the Cincinnati area.

In preparation for the attacks, Abdulkader conducted surveillance of the police station, received a targeting package about the victim, went to a shooting range, learned how to operate certain firearms and practiced shooting the firearms. He also bought an AK-47 assault rifle for the attack.

According to the statement of facts admitted by Abdulkader at the plea hearing, beginning in at least July 2014 and continuing into 2015, Abdulkader expressed his support for ISIL on Twitter accounts. From approximately March 2015 to mid-April 2015, Abdulkader began speaking with a Confidential Human Source (CHS) about his desire and intention to travel to Syria in order to join ISIL as a fighter. 

During that same time, Abdulkader made plans and preparations to travel to Syria to join ISIL as a fighter.  Namely, he secured a passport, saved money for the trip and researched the logistical details of traveling to Syria and joining ISIL. In late April, though, Abdulkader expressed concerns about the ability to travel and postponed his original departure date of May 2, 2015.

During May 2015, Abdulkader was in electronic communication with one or more individuals located overseas who he understood were members of ISIL. One of those individuals was a member of ISIL identified as Junaid Hussein. Through their communications, Junaid Hussein directed and encouraged Abdulkader to plan and execute a violent attack within the U.S.

Abdulkader communicated with Junaid Hussein and the CHS about a plan to kill an identified military employee on account of his position with the U.S. government. The plan included abducting the employee at the employee’s home and filming the execution of the employee.

After killing the employee, Abdulkader planned to execute a violent attack on a police station in the Southern District of Ohio using firearms and Molotov cocktails.

Abdulkader was arrested on May 21, 2015 by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), after a controlled purchase and possession of the AK-47 assault rifle.

The defendant was charged by criminal complaint on May 22, 2015 and a bill of information was filed on March 2. Abdulkader pleaded guilty to the three charges in the information on March 24 before U.S. District Judge Barrett. The court documents and proceedings were unsealed in July.

Acting Assistant Attorney General McCord and U.S. Attorney Glassman commended the investigation of this case by the JTTF. The JTTF is made up of officers and agents from the Cincinnati Police Department; Colerain Police Department in Cincinnati; Dayton Police Department in Dayton, Ohio; Ohio State Highway Patrol; University of Cincinnati Police Department; U.S. Air Force OSI; FBI; U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement; IRS; U.S. Secret Service; U.S. Postal Inspection Service; West Chester Police Department in West Chester, Ohio; and Xenia Police Department in Xenia, Ohio.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Mangan for the Southern District of Ohio and Trial Attorney Michael Dittoe of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section. 

On This Day In History President John F. Kennedy Assassinated

As History.com notes, on this day in 1963 President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

You can read about the event via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/john-f-kennedy-assassinated?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2016-1122-11222016&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=112718733&kx_EmailCampaignID=8225&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2016-1122-11222016&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c9

You can also read my Crime Beat column on the Kennedy assassination via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/01/crime-beat-column-assassination-of.html

On This Day In History Jonathan Pollard Was Arrested For Spying For Isreal

As History.com notes, on this day in 1985, called "The Year of the Spy," U.S. naval intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard was arrested for spying for Israel.

You can read about the case via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/israeli-spy-arrested-in-united-states?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2016-1121-11212016&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=112309221&kx_EmailCampaignID=8195&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2016-1121-11212016&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa%20&os_ehash=44@experian:de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa

You can also read more about the Pollard case via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2016/11/a-look-back-at-convicted-spy-jonathan.html

Note: History.com states that Pollard is in prison, but he has in fact been released.

A Look Back At The Convicted Spy Jonathan Pollard: My Piece On The Insider Threat - Lessons Learned From The Jonathan Pollard Case

A while back I interviewed former Ronald J. Olive, a former NCIS special agent who worked with and later arrested and interrogated Jonathan Pollard.

You can read my Counterterrorism magazine piece on the Jonathan Pollard case below:

 

The Intellectual And The Talk Show Host: Buckley’s Regular Presence On Carson’s ‘Tonight’

James Rosen, editor of A Torch Kept Lit: Great Lives of the Twentieth Century, a book of William F. Buckley's pieces on notable people during the conservative writer's lifetime, offers a piece in the Los Angeles Times on Buckley's many appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

"Johnny Carson was amused by everything,” William F. Buckley Jr., the godfather of modern American conservatism, once observed about the King of Late Night. Buckley’s exposure to the dominant TV entertainer of the 20th century was, literally, episodic: the product of appearances on “The Tonight Show” so frequent that Buckley lost count of them. “I was his guest a half-dozen times,” he estimated after Carson’s death – by which time the figure was actually twice as high.

Today, the regular presence on the leading late night TV shows of someone like Buckley, an aristocratic intellectual given to speaking in whole paragraphs, even other languages – he began one “Tonight” appearance with several sentences in Spanish – would seem, in a lineup dominated by actors and pop stars, glaringly out of place. Back then, however, Buckley fit right in and we were, as a nation, richer for it.

It was in the 1960s and ’70s that Buckley and Carson reached the apex of their influence in their overlapping fields. As a magazine editor, syndicated newspaper columnist, college lecturer, spy novelist, talk show guest and host of “Firing Line,” the longest-running TV show with a single host, Buckley was even more of a multimedia phenomenon than Carson.

What brought them together was an admirable appetite for eclecticism less discernible in our niche-targeted era: a Warholian conflation of High and Low that placed entertainers, athletes, politicians, novelists, intellectuals, psychics and oddballs on the same TV couch.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-rosen-buckley-carson-20161120-story.html

FBI: Con Artist Brought to Justice - Arizona Woman Faked Cancer, Scammed Veterans

The FBI released the below report:

An Arizona con artist will be spending the next 25 years behind bars after being convicted of 18 felonies in two separate trials related to her faking cancer and brazenly scamming veterans’ charities out of thousands of dollars.

Chalice Zeitner’s crimes were so outrageous, said FBI Special Agent Heather Rivera, “it’s unlike anything I have ever seen before.”

Zeitner, who skipped town and changed her name when she thought the heat was on, forged medical documents, stole identities, duped her boyfriend and physicians, and fabricated careers that included being a race car driver and a wealthy attorney who owned a law firm in South Africa. Along the way, she left a wake of victims.

Rivera, who investigated the case with Special Agent Suzanne Allen from the FBI’s Phoenix Division, noted that Zeitner seemed to make a career of lies and deception. “Sadly, her path in life was all about defrauding people who trusted her.”

In 2010, Zeitner told her boyfriend she had cancer and was pregnant. Zeitner said she needed to terminate the pregnancy to receive life-saving surgery in Boston. “She told her boyfriend that if she didn’t terminate the pregnancy, she was going to die,” Rivera said. “In reality, she did not have cancer. She was pregnant, but it was not her boyfriend’s child.”

Zeitner then fraudulently created documents from a Boston doctor stating she needed the life-saving surgery by a certain date. She took that document to her Phoenix OB-GYN, who petitioned the hospital to perform a state-funded, late-term abortion so his patient’s life-saving surgery could take place in Boston.

Her OB-GYN “had no reason to think she was lying,” Rivera said, “because who lies about having cancer?”

Shortly after the pregnancy termination, Zeitner’s boyfriend received a social media message supposedly from a family friend named Trinity stating that Zeitner was too proud to ask for help but she wanted to undergo a new type of cancer treatment in Mexico that was expensive. Trinity convinced the boyfriend to fundraise online for the treatment, and he did, raising more than $3,000.

“We are thankful that this individual is going to be off the streets for many years and won’t be able to take advantage of anyone else.”

Suzanne Allen, special agent, FBI Phoenix

Trinity, it turned out, was “a fake person Zeitner created to lend legitimacy to the scheme,” Allen said. Eventually, the boyfriend became suspicious when he was unable to meet Trinity in person, and doctors ultimately learned the truth about Zeitner through examinations during a subsequent pregnancy and cesarean delivery: She had never had cancer.

Her OB-GYN reported Zeitner to state medical authorities, and the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System enlisted the FBI’s help to investigate. By that time, however, Zeitner was long gone, having moved to California and changed her name.

In California, Zeitner befriended a man who ran a charity on behalf of veterans. He hoped to create a motor racing team to help raise money, and Zeitner invented a story to gain his trust. “She claimed to be a race car driver who had connections in the industry,” said Allen. She also claimed to be a highly decorated veteran and falsified a military service record to support her claim. On behalf of the charity, Zeitner started planning—and raising money—for a black-tie gala in Washington, D.C. surrounding Veteran’s Day 2012.

“There is no evidence to back up any of Zeitner’s claims regarding her racing cars or military decorations,” Allen said, but Zeitner was persuasive. Although the gala never took place, before the scam unraveled Zeitner had stolen identities from the man and his family and used them to obtain credit cards to run up $25,000 in personal charges. Another veteran’s charity in Arizona was also scammed out of $15,000.

The FBI caught up with the con artist in May 2015. She had fraudulently changed her name to Al Serkez and was living in Georgia. After her arrest and return to Arizona, she was indicted by the state on 11 counts related to the health care fraud. A few months later, a separate state indictment charged her with defrauding the veterans’ charities.

Zeitner was deemed competent to stand trial. In both cases she mounted no defense but maintained her innocence. In April 2016, she was found guilty on the health care charges—among them, faking cancer to receive a government-funded, late-term abortion. In August 2016, after a separate trial, a jury convicted Zeitner on seven additional felony counts for scamming the veterans’ charities. In September, an Arizona judge sentenced her to more than 25 years in prison.

“We are thankful,” Allen said, “that this individual is going to be off the streets for many years and won’t be able to take advantage of anyone else.”

No Reservations At Ristorante Merlino's

Veteran organized crime reporter and author George Anastasia offers a piece at Bigtrial.net (with permission from Gangland News) on the closing of the Florida restaurant run by Joey Merlino, the reputed boss of the Philadelphia Cosa Nosa organized crime family.

If you picked up a snazzy Merlino's wineglass on your last trip to Boca, don't throw it away. It may soon be a collector's item. It looks like Joey Merlino is out of the restaurant business.

Reports from Boca Raton, where his posh, eponymous nightspot was located, indicate that the restaurant is closed and the property is for sale. In June, Skinny Joey denied a Miami Herald report that Merlino's had gone belly up. He insisted that his joint was shutting down for the summer season and would reopen in the fall. 

Who knows? That may have been the plan. But that was before the racketeering indictment that snared him and 45 co-defendants for being part of what federal prosecutors have dubbed an East Coast LCN Enterprise. 


You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.bigtrial.net/2016/11/reprinted-with-permission-from-gangland.html

Note: George Anastasia mentions former mobster Ron Previte in the piece. You can read my Philadelphia Inquirer review of his book on Previte and Merlino, The Last Gangster, via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/08/my-philadelphia-inquirer-review-of_7773.html