The
investigation into some 500 Arab and Muslim businesses - many of them
convenience stores - was initiated after the September 11 terror
attacks, and involves hundreds of investigators who have been deployed
to pursue the plots, according to the newspaper.
“It
wasn’t until after September 11th that we understood the magnitude
of the fundraising from our own shores,” John Forbes, a former U.S.
Customs Service official who directed a financial crimes task force in
New York, told the Post.
U.S.
authorities said they believe small-scale scams are generating tens of
millions of dollars a year for groups.
“We
were always looking to catch the big rats” in terror financing, he
added. "But in looking for rats, thousands of ants got by,”
Forbes said.
Investigators
are searching for similarities in the convenience stores' financial
practices and how they transfer money to determine whether their
activities are centrally directed, the Post reported.
The
criminal activity includes skimming profits of drug sales, stealing
and reselling baby formula, illegally redeeming huge quantities of
grocery coupons, collecting fraudulent welfare payments, swiping
credit card numbers and hawking unlicensed T-shirts.
Federal
investigators suspect that some of the money has gone to Palestinian
groups in their resistance movement against Israel, including the
Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine.
Authorities
said a U.S. Customs Service supercomputer program, known as the
Numerically Integrated Profiling System (NIPS), has been diverted from
analyzing the flow of drug money to tracking terror funds, a move that
led to raids on Pakistani operators of jewelry kiosks in seven states,
the report said.
The
program traces commodities entering and leaving the country, and
helped pick up telling anomalies - such as the contrast between gold
imports to the United States and the amount of jewelry sold - that led
to nationwide raids on more than 70 mostly Pakistani-owned jewelry
shops in late June, reports the Post.
Some
of the criminal rings have operated in this country for decades,
according to the daily. But until recently, law enforcement agencies
paid only scant attention to the schemes because they are difficult to
crack and time-consuming to prosecute.
Since
September 11 terrorist attacks, however, they have deployed hundreds
of investigators to pursue the plots, the Post reported.
The
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), however, does not think the
schemes under investigation were used to finance the September 11
hijacking attacks, which were funded by about $500,000 sent from
outside the U.S. But officials believe that as much as $30 million
raised annually through scams in the United States is dispatched to
Middle Eastern groups, authorities told the newspaper.
The
annual budget of Al-Qaeda has been estimated at $100 million in recent
years, reports the paper
