Terror finance: two high-stakes cases

For its part, the US Attorney's office in Brooklyn, which is prosecuting the case, refuses comment. Government officials will only say that they stand by their case.

Elfgeeh, the ice cream shop owner, is charged with a very different offense - operating a money transfer business without a license. He was well known in the Yemeni community in Brooklyn for helping friends and associates send money overseas.

That prompted FBI informant Alanssi's first visit to his ice cream shop, in which Elfgeeh turned him away. Alanssi returned a second time. Elfgeeh says he again refused to help him. More than a year later, FBI agents arrived at his home and asked if they could search it. His telephone number had allegedly been found among Mouyad's things. Elfgeeh allowed them in, even though they didn't have a warrant. He had "nothing to hide," he says. "I hadn't done anything wrong."

The FBI agents found bank records dating back to 1995. They indicated that while the Carnival Ice Cream Shop revenues amounted to less than $200,000 a year, more than $20 million had been transferred through the shop's account over six years. Most of the transactions were with people in Yemen, but several large sums had been wired to Thailand, China, and Italy.

Elfgeeh, now an American citizen, readily admits he used his business account to help Yemeni immigrants send money back home. He says it's common in their close-knit community, particularly for people with families that live in remote villages. Several neighbors and friends in Brooklyn say that Elfgeeh is a respected businessman in the community, and therefore someone to be trusted with people's money.

He says he was not running an unlicensed money-transfer business, but providing a "community service." And because he used his bank accounts, he says, all the transactions were above board and wired through a licensed bank. According to Elfgeeh, the large transactions were favors done for friends with businesses in Yemen that needed the money to pay for auto parts and building materials. He says he has receipts and letters to prove it was all legitimate.

His lawyers are challenging the constitutionality of the statute under which Elfgeeh is being charged. They're also asking that the case be dismissed because it was based on a tainted informer's information. "There's no contention he [Elfgeeh] ever sent a dime to a questionable person, let alone a terrorist," says Burt Pugach, a paralegal working on the case. "This has nothing to do with terrorism."

The US Attorney's office wouldn't comment on the specifics of this case either. Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for the Brooklyn office, simply said of both investigations: "We're prepared to go to trial."

Federal prosecutors have, however, shifted strategies somewhat. Earlier this month, they filed a new indictment charging that the defendants in both cases "attempted" to provide material support to terrorists, as opposed to actually doing it.

More recently, they filed a motion indicating they will not call Alanssi as a witness in the sheikh's trial, relying instead on tape recordings made during the sting operation in Germany. That way his protests about the FBI's treatment of him, and charges of criminal wrongdoing, won't have to be introduced to the jury.

In the Elfgeeh case, too, the government, according to its indictment, relies primarily on the ice cream shop owner's own bank records, rather than on information provided by Alanssi, to support its charges.

Whatever the strength of the government's cases, some terror-finance experts believe it's important for authorities to monitor all types of informal money-transfer operations, whether there's direct evidence of ties to terrorists or not, since Al Qaeda has used them in the past.

"I'm not sympathetic to somebody not registering [their money-transfer activities]," says Jonathan Winer, a terrorism expert referring to Elfgeeh's lack of a license, "because it's not costly to register and the implication of registering is that you've got to be on the lookout not to be facilitating any illegal activity just as you were a broker, banker, or an insurance company."

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