Authors: Matthew Levitt
Hammoud’s criminal enterprise crisscrossed the United States from Michigan, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, New York, and North Carolina to West Virginia (and, prosecutors stressed, points in between) and spanned the globe from the United States and Canada to Lebanon, Brazil, Paraguay, and China. Members obtained counterfeit cigarette stamps from Paraguay and Brazil, prompting Detroit JTTF agents to travel to the tri-border area to investigate that end of the conspiracy’s activities. The US agents’ efforts enabled Brazilian authorities to apprehend a major counterfeit ring that manufactured not only false cigarette stamps but also passports, national identity cards, and more.
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Other elements in the conspiracy involved the import of counterfeit Viagra pills from China and Zig-Zag-brand cigarette paper from Indonesia.
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The Hammoud enterprise’s primary source for counterfeit Zig-Zag paper was Tarek Makki, an ethnic Lebanese from Sierra Leone who was living in Dearborn and later pleaded guilty to Zig-Zag trafficking and money laundering charges filed in Michigan and Texas.
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When agents learned that Tarek Makki’s uncle was in the diamond business in Sierra Leone, where Hezbollah has long profited from blood diamonds, they sought evidence of Makki’s involvement but could not substantiate their findings.
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With so many angles to the case, multiple agents were assigned to cover the various frauds in which Hammoud and Co. were involved. According to officials involved in the investigation, the period of 2002 and 2003 “was nuts. We were managing over a dozen sources and pursuing two to three different investigative tracks at a time.”
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While the cigarette tax stamp angle brought agents to South America, and the Zig-Zag file led to Indonesia, the counterfeit Viagra scheme drew agents’ attention to China. Here too the profit margins were attractive, and the funding came directly
from the profits of cigarette smuggling, illicit funds that had to be laundered anyway. By 2002, Hammoud and his crew were believed to be moving half a million dollars’ worth of cigarettes a week across state lines. According to authorities, over a three-month period that year they bought more than 90,000 counterfeit Viagra pills. The knockoff little blue pills were easy money. “They’re small, they’re high in demand and they’re easily transportable,” explained a senior FBI agent who led the Iran-Hezbollah unit at FBI headquarters.
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By 2009, knockoff versions of Viagra would be the most widely counterfeited drug in the world, as lucrative a criminal enterprise as narcotics.
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Hammoud’s Viagra operation was by no means the only drug-related Hezbollah scheme uncovered in the United States. In August 2000, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) special agents arrested more than 140 people in eight cities as part of a three-phase operation dubbed Mountain Express targeting methamphetamine production. Investigators also traced large amounts of profit being sent to individuals in the Middle East with possible connections to terrorist organizations.
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At the time, then–DEA administrator Asa Hutchinson said, “I am satisfied that portions of the drug sales have moved back to the Middle East and portions of that are going to support terrorist organizations. Clearly, this is the first time we have seen with [
sic
] drug transactions in the United States where proceeds are actually going back to fund terrorism.”
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The investigation found that many of the men arrested had ties to Jordan, Yemen, Lebanon, and other Middle East countries, and were sending portions of their proceeds back to accounts in the Middle East that have since been connected to terrorist groups, including Hezbollah.
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Back in Dearborn, Hammoud’s criminal enterprise went where opportunities took it, including trafficking in stolen goods as varied as socks, toilet paper, and infant formula. On one day in July 2002, a member of the group took possession of 27,648 rolls of toilet paper; 10,560 pairs of socks; and 60 cans of Similac infant formula, all purportedly stolen.
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In the words of one person involved in the Bathwater investigations, when it came to the amount of money made through cigarette smuggling and other schemes, “Ali Farhat was big but Imad Hammoud was huge.” The totals, prosecutors estimate, were in the millions.
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Given the Hammoud group’s direct ties to the Moussawi clan, and the avid support for Hezbollah held by its Dearborn ringleaders, investigators were little surprised to learn that individuals who were critical of Hezbollah were confronted and kicked out of the crew. Portions of the profits were reportedly delivered to Hezbollah, sometimes via Hammoud’s uncle who lived just over the bridge in Ontario, Canada.
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Hammoud and his partner Hassan Makki both charged a “resistance tax,” an additional fee over the black market cost per carton of contraband cigarettes, which customers were told would go to Hezbollah. They also maintained collection boxes for Hezbollah donations and set aside other chunks of money for transfer to the group in Lebanon.
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Another reason prosecutors saw Hammoud as a priority target was his enterprise’s close ties to senior Hezbollah leaders. One sign of this intimacy was that a
conspiracy member, Beirut-based Hassan Ali Moussawi, is the brother of Islamic Amal founder and then Hezbollah leader Hussein Moussawi.
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Now a Hezbollah Member of Parliament in Lebanon, Hussein’s brother was caught raising money for Hezbollah by selling counterfeit Viagra in the United States. According to prosecutors, some of the funds raised for Hezbollah were sent to Lebanon through Hassan Moussawi, “who had a close personal relationship with upper echelon Hezbollah officials.” While some of the conspirators were driven by personal gain and supported Hezbollah as a bonus, “Al-Mosawi’s participation with the conspiracy was expressly for the purpose of benefitting Hezbollah; and virtually all of the conspirators’ collaboration with al-Mosawi was to garner favor from Hezbollah.”
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In September 2012, the Moussawis would be tied to a similar scheme producing another counterfeit drug back in Lebanon.
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A close reading of the indictment reveals a particularly telling piece of information about the Hammoud enterprise’s role in the overall Hezbollah network. “On or about February 22, 2001,” the indictment reads, “Imad Hammoud wire transferred $47,000 through the Bank of New York to Fawzy Ayoub’s bank account in Beirut Ryiad [
sic
] Bank in London, England.”
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Recall that Ayoub is a convicted Hezbollah operative who once lived in the Dearborn area as well as across the bridge in Canada (see
chapter 6
). At the time of the wire transfer, Ayoub had already arrived in Israel on a fictitious American passport for the purpose of carrying out a terrorist attack.
In early February 2001, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani snuck into the United States through Mexico and made his way to Dearborn. Kourani, a highly trained Hezbollah operative whose brother was Hezbollah’s military security chief for southern Lebanon, entered the United States completely undetected.
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This is a vulnerability long on the radar of US intelligence. According to one intelligence report, “travelers associated with various terrorist groups—including Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad—are tapping into global alien smuggling networks to abet their movements around the world, including to the United States.”
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Back in Lebanon, Kourani paid a Beirut consular official $3,000 for a Mexican visa and then paid Salim Boughader Mucharrafille, the owner of a Lebanese café in Tijuana, an additional $4,000 to smuggle him across the border into California. Four years after illegally entering the United States, Kourani pleaded guilty to materially supporting Hezbollah. According to an FBI affidavit, Kourani admitted raising at least $40,000 for Hezbollah, some of it through mortgage fraud and still more through solicitation of “charitable” donations.
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Whatever money he raised in the United States, Kourani was confident he could get it back to Hezbollah. Once, Kourani told an FBI informant that he had recently sent $40,000 in money orders and cash to Hezbollah and could send as much money back to Lebanon as he liked because a friend who worked at the Beirut airport
helped smuggle the money into the country.
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Nine different FBI informants independently identified Kourani as a Hezbollah operative, alternately describing him as a Hezbollah fundraiser, member, and fighter.
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To be sure, Kourani did much more than just raise funds for Hezbollah. For example, in Lebanon he oversaw the application process and detailed background checks of prospective Hezbollah recruits.
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Later, Kourani would brag behind closed doors to like-minded friends in the Dearborn area that Hezbollah sent him to Iran for military training in the early 1990s, after which he took part in Hezbollah military actions against Israeli targets. In one instance, Kourani told someone he thought he could trust about his experience fighting the Israelis over sixteen days in 1996. Unfortunately for Kourani, the trusted friend was a well-placed FBI source.
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According to prosecutors, Kourani had received “specialized training in radical Shiite fundamentalism, weaponry, spy craft, and counterintelligence in Lebanon and Iran.”
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Kourani, whose familial ties to Hezbollah ran deep, was charged with conspiring with “individuals at the highest levels” of the group.
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One brother, Haidar, was the group’s chief of military security for southern Lebanon and was described by one FBI source as “the Chief of Staff for Hezbollah.”
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An unindicted co-conspirator, Haidar oversaw his brother’s US activities on behalf of Hezbollah.
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Mahmoud Kourani told FBI informants he was sending money to his brother for Hezbollah.
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During an FBI interview, Kourani acknowledged Haidar’s status within the Hezbollah hierarchy and added that two other brothers, Hussein and Abdullah, were also Hezbollah members.
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Mahmoud and Haidar, an FBI source reported, “were members of a Hezbollah unit that claimed responsibility for the 1988 kidnapping, torture, and murder of Lt. Col. W. Higgins in southern Lebanon.”
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Agents first arrested Kourani on charges of harboring an illegal alien after searching his Dearborn home in May 2003. In the search they found $8,000 in cash and checks hidden in his bedroom as well as audiotapes and pictures, one of which featured one of his young children wearing a large necklace with a picture of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
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The tapes included songs glorifying Hezbollah violence. “We offer to you Hezbollah, a pledge of loyalty,” went one refrain. “Rise for Jihad! Rise for Jihad! … I offer you, Hezbollah, my blood in my hand.”
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Indicted on those charges in November 2003, Kourani pleaded guilty and served six months in federal prison. All the while, federal agents were building a much more substantial case against him for providing material support to Hezbollah.
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Kourani was awaiting deportation in an immigration holding facility when prosecutors unsealed a grand jury indictment laying out the terrorism charges in January 2004. Kourani pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to a Foreign Terrorist Organization and was sentenced to fifty-four months in prison.
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One question that still perplexes investigators is why someone of Kourani’s stature within Hezbollah would come to the United States. Why allow him to take the risk? He clearly did not come to stay, considering that he left his wife and children back in Lebanon. There was the ever-present need for fundraising, which he apparently did successfully, but the group already had numerous capable financial supporters
in the Dearborn area and across the country. The question persisted: Could he have come to the United States for some more critical purpose?
Though they had precious little incriminating information about him when they first opened their investigation, by the time he was indicted on terrorism charges, authorities believed keeping him detained pending trial was absolutely critical for two main reasons. The first reason was that they worried that Hezbollah could actively help Kourani flee the United States. “Hezbollah has loyalists and operatives in numerous countries, including Ontario, Canada and the Eastern District of Michigan,” prosecutors informed the court. “Were Kourani to be released on bond, Hezbollah would have the full ability and tremendous incentive to assist Kourani in escaping from and eluding United States authorities, not only because of Kourani’s family connections, but also to ensure that he could not be persuaded to cooperate with the government against other Hezbollah members within the United States and abroad.”
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Even within Hezbollah’s higher echelons, it seems, trust went only so far.
The second reason prosecutors opposed bail for Kourani was more chilling. “Were Kourani to be released on bond,” prosecutors argued, “he would be in a better position to help Hezbollah hunt the government’s witnesses for elimination not only to prevent this case from going forward, but also to prevent witnesses from leading the government to other Hezbollah operatives in the United States.”
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The FBI’s investigation into Kourani underscored the government’s concern. According to one FBI source, “if Hezbollah tasked Kourani to do something in the United States, he would carry out the mission on behalf of the organization.”
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Once Kourani was arrested, federal officials picked up information indicating that senior Hezbollah officials were worried about what government witnesses, sources, or telephone wiretaps might reveal about him in particular and Hezbollah’s activities in general. In the wake of Kourani’s arrest, authorities assessed that Hezbollah may have changed some of its standards allowing senior operatives to travel abroad so freely.
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