Stolen Baby Formula Funding Terrorism. Where’s the Outrage?
On 9/11/2001, the day terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, a state trooper in Texas pulled over a Middle Eastern man driving a rental van. The officer noted that the van was full of baby formula. Later, the police realized the driver was a known terrorist linked to an organized retail crime (ORC) ring that traveled the nation stealing baby formula. And the money made from reselling this particular truck load was wired to the Middle East and never seen again.
This story comes from a 2005 story in the Christian Science Monitor that reported retailers suffered through $30 billion in theft that year and stolen baby formula made up approximately $7 billion of that total.
Seven billion dollars in stolen baby formula?
Where is all that money going? Has the problem grown worse since 2005? And where’s the mainstream media on this story? You’d think the juxtaposition between terrorists and baby formula would draw Dateline and 60 Minutes — or at least Geraldo Rivera.
In that 2005 story, the Monitor noted that there were more than 1,000 offers of Enfamil baby formula available on eBay. Two years later, and despite the fact that many states now require buyers to purchase baby formula from licensed wholesalers, you can find 2,634 offers for Enfamil on eBay.
Mark Clayton of the Monitor wrote
“Operation Blackbird, as Texas investigators dubbed their multistate baby-formula investigation, has since led to felony charges against more than 40 suspects, about half illegal immigrants. Authorities have seized some $2.7 million in stolen assets, including $1 million worth of formula.
“Blackbird was just the beginning. In the nearly four years since 9/11, police have uncovered and dismantled a growing number of regional and national theft rings specializing in shoplifted infant formula, over-the-counter medicines, and personal-care products. At least eight of the major baby-formula cases have involved ‘fences’ who are of Middle Eastern descent or who have ties to that region, according to a Monitor review of congressional testimony, news accounts, and a study by the National Retail Federation released Tuesday.
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation has traced money from these infant-formula traffickers back to nations where terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Hizbullah, are active, investigators say. Then, the trail usually goes cold. Once funds enter such countries, there’s often no way to track them.”
Is this a growing trend?
Here’s a 2003 story about a trafficker in baby formula who stood to may make a profit of $4 million but was caught by the Canadian Mounties. Mohamad S. Mostafa had been in reselling baby formula since 1994, but he wasn’t caught till a month after 9/11.
Recently, there’s been lots of baby formula thefts in the news:
Two held in formula thefts
Grocer reaches plea deal in theft ring case (for laundering $70 million)
And just this week, a federal judge agreed to let Ali Kareem Aladimi withdraw his guilty plea and go to trial over the “63 original charges of conspiracy to distribute dangerous drugs, money laundering, bank fraud and dealing in stolen goods,” according to the Middletown Journal. Federal prosecutors alledge that Mr. Aladimi sold stolen baby from 1993-2002 and in a raid in 1999 they found $54,000 worth of stolen Gerber baby formula and $760,000 in cash packed in shrink-wrapped Clairol hair-coloring kits.
Finally, there’s this scary news in FrontPage Magazine’s story, Terror Criminal Links Growing
“The former International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director, Michel Camdessus, estimated that money laundered worldwide 1999, totaled between 2% and 5% of combined gross domestic product (GDP)—or approximately $1.8 trillion. By April 2006, the IMF’s World Economic Outlook estimate of the world economy was $65.174 trillion. Considering the rise of radical Muslim terrorist groups, and the dramatic increase in ‘ordinary’ crime, as well as major technological advances, it is now estimated that at least $5 trillions are being laundered annually, 70% are thought to be generated from the illegal drug trade.”
In the very last line of of “Terror Criminal Links Growing” authors Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen suggest, “it would seem prudent for law enforcement to take a closer look at the identities and profiles of each and every ‘ordinary’ criminal seized, be it drug dealers, car thieves, or ‘white collar’ criminals.”
Sounds like a recommendation for widespread adoption of identity resolution solutions to us and we’d have to agree. Back on August 13th, our post Baby Formula: Out of the Mouths of Babes and into the Coffers of Terrorists recommended that retailers should assist the FBI’s LERPnet program to track down organized retail crime rings “by organizing and analyzing in-house retail data with the implementation of an identity resolution solution.”
With terror funding rising nearly $3 trillion dollars since 1999, and as we’ve seen up above, possibly $7 billion comes from organized retail crime gangs in the U.S. stealing baby formula, where’s the outrage? Where’s Congress on this issue? Where’s the press?
This is a serious issue and action needs to be taken immediately.
Subscribe to this blog