The federal government called it a scam. Three men wired $88 million overseas, prosecutors say, and tried to keep it a secret.
But a defense lawyer says they weren't doing anything bad with the money: They were just sending it home to relatives, and the government knew it.
"They are just creating an opportunity for their loved ones to receive money. ... In the olden days, they used to just pass it off by hand. Here, they are doing it through a wiring service," said Detroit attorney Nabih Ayad, who believes the government is being overzealous in the case.
Ayad stressed the case is not about terrorism, and that the government has never suggested that the money wound up in the wrong hands.
"I think it's a little bit too aggressive to bring federal charges against them," Ayad said. "In my client's case, the government had already visited his business in 2013 and never told him to stop doing it."
Ayad is representing Omar Alhalmi, 38, who is charged with funneling $22.3 million to Yemen and other countries by creating phony businesses whose only purpose was to move cash overseas.
The government said Alhalmi never disclosed where the money came from or where it was going, and created numerous bank accounts just to access the banking industry's wiring service. Prosecutors allege that Alhalmi used 13 phony business bank accounts between 2011-16. He had to create many businesses, they said, because the banks continued to shut down the accounts associated with his large cash money transfers.
But Ayad said there was nothing illicit about where the money came from or where it was going. Rather, he said, Alhalmi and others collected money from people in the Yemeni community who wanted to send cash to loved ones back home. Users were charged a fee to have their money wired back to Yemen where, he said, civil war has placed the whole country in disarray.
"Not everyone has a bank account in the old country," Ayad said. "You're talking about a large Yemeni community (in metro Detroit). That's how they get money back home."
Ayad said while his client may have operated without the proper license, as the government alleged, he is facing the same penalty as someone who stole $10 million from a bank.
"It's a heavy, heavy charge. It doesn't fit the crime," Ayad said. "He didn't steal from people. There's not a victim here who's been out of pocket."
The government doesn't see it that way.
According to two separate indictments filed Jan. 22, Alhalmi and two others engaged in secretive banking behavior for years that broke the law. The other defendants are: Fahd Samaha, 45, and Maged Alsabahi, 29, who are accused of running an illegal cash delivery operation from 2013 through 2015. They created multiple fake businesses by using the addresses of vacant buildings, storefronts or residences and used "straw business owners" or "fronts" to help send $63 million to various countries, including Yemen and China.
Prosecutors allege the men essentially ran an unlicensed business and charged users of the business a fee for their services.
Alsabahi, Samaha and Alhalmi are charged with causing the filing of a false currency transaction report and operating an unlicensed money transmitting businesses. Both crimes are punishable by a maximum punishment of five years in prison.
