Posted on 09/06/2006 4:40:52 AM PDT by FreedomPoster
I am pretty sure these guys are on someones "watch" list.
At least I hope they are.
All are Palestinian-American.
Adham Othman said through his lawyer.........
Okay - What's wrong with this picture?
OK, but they were reselling the phones without a valid retail license at the least.
Detroit protects it's terrorists. The new motto for the state of Michigan
They basically got the federales to play up terror for them. An older wiser FBI woulda not said squat about the Mackinac pix, knowing they had no case.
Some pings to folks on the related thread here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1684109/posts
The cost of gasoline, the time they spent going to different stores to get the phones, and the very large sum used to buy the phones themselves seems to make it a very unprofitable business venture.
It's possible they were taking the phones apart or reprogramming them for a use other than their intended use, and then reselling them for that purpose, but it sounds like that is also illegal.
It sounds like there was a reasonable suspicion that these guys were involved with terrorism, but if the evidence of that is lacking it still sounds like their actions were illegal, and the government can still follow up any leads that might link these men to terrorists, and people are going to be watching people who buy lots of cell phones more carefully now as well.
Seems like the government is doing their job reasonably well in this case.
Something never mentioned and very surprisingly here - never asked .... What happened to all the cell phones?
This is the problem with not having a declared war. Enemy agents need a support network that does acts that doen't rise to sabotage to gather the materials for sabotage.
It's very hard to prove comspiracy based on the purchase of wire, or batteries or cell phones. that's in a criminal case. In a combat zone, anyone caught with those items would be detained for interrogation, and then put in a pow camp. And in this case , the worlds the combat zone.
TracFone sells the Nokia phones at a loss, hoping to make it up when the buyer spends money on minutes. If the phones are unlocked, such that they can be used on a non-TracFone network, then they can be resold at more than they cost at WalMart. There is a whole industry out there supporting this sort of operation.
A $19.95 Tracphone could easily be sold for $30.00 as pieces. Multiply $10 profit by 1,00 phones and you have a tidy sum ($10,000)
Tracphone practically gives their phones away, in hopes that the purchaser will buy time to recharge their phone.
You could sell the battery for $5 with $5 shipping and handling (shipping would be less than 50 cents). Sell the phone (less battery)for $10 bucks (with $8 shipping, cost of shipping it $4). Sell the card with 30 mins time for $1 ($3 shipping).
On ebay for a time one of the big selling items was Lexmark printers. Lexmark sold their printer for $30 with a printer cartrige in it. Refill cartriges were $25. The seller would buy a printer, pull the cartrige and sell it on ebay for $15 ($8 s/h), and the printer for $15 ($15 S/h). Many 1,000's were sold that way.
A smart person can walk into Wal Mart, Target, Home Depot, and pick out the items to sell on ebay with easily 50% profit and sometimes 300% profit.
Some printers ship with a starter cartridge with substantially less ink than in refill cartridges. I don't know whether Lexmark does that.
Absolutely, but most people don't know that, so they bid the cartriges up to close to the retail price, thinking they are getting a bargain. Remember, let the buyer beware.
Show me auctions on E-bay selling the types of phones in the stories, during the last 3 months.
...oh, and maybe research the sellers to see if they are Islamic...?
Cheers!
These men in the story are well known resellers of cell phones at the miles of flea market "wholesale" shops on Harry Hines in Dallas. They travel around to Wal Marts buying phones. Some american store owners came forward and vouched for them, said they've been doing it for years.
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