Posted on 7/7/2007, 1:18:44 PM by Diana in Wisconsin
A New Berlin grocery wholesaler under investigation in the fencing of large quantities of stolen infant formula is far from alone in a bootlegging battle that law enforcement has been waging for the better part of a decade.
According to federal investigators, Kaloti Enterprises reached across state lines to take in $4 million in suspected stolen baby formula in one year alone. It's a scheme that the FBI says it has seen repeatedly in recent years.
"In the years after September 11, police discovered and disrupted several regional and national theft rings specializing in shoplifted baby formula," according to a February 2007 FBI bulletin to law enforcement agencies.
• In April, Carlos Javier Medina-Castellanos, 30, was sentenced to 45 years in prison in federal court in North Carolina on two racketeering counts of fencing stolen merchandise, including infant formula sold to distributors in Ohio, Wisconsin and Kentucky.
• In March, 25 people were indicted in federal court in Ohio on charges that a group of Akron-area stores were selling stolen formula.
• In February, eight people were indicted in federal court in Oakland, Calif., on charges of buying merchandise, including formula, that had been stolen from large retailers including Safeway, Target, Walgreens and Wal-Mart.
Two other infant formula theft cases were filed in federal court in Milwaukee before investigators raided Kaloti in February.
• In August, a Kenosha store operator is scheduled to stand trial in federal court in Milwaukee on 2-year-old charges that he and his two brothers bought stolen infant formula from suppliers in Ohio. His brothers have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.
• In February, a complaint filed a month earlier against a Milwaukee store owner was dismissed after he agreed to cooperate with authorities in their investigation. For two years, according to court records, the man was buying "stolen infant formula from individuals in several states including North Carolina, Georgia and California," receiving shipments worth $70,000 to $120,000 "one to two times per week, on average."
Federal investigators are interested in the stolen formula trade because it involves trafficking the goods across state lines and because the federal government sponsors the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program. The program distributes vouchers for merchandise to low-income pregnant women and new mothers.
Storekeepers deposit the vouchers in bank accounts and are reimbursed by the federal government.
Investigators went to the Kaloti warehouse Feb. 15 and 16, and left with numerous documents and 87,040 cans of infant formula, according to an affidavit used as a basis for a search warrant.
Kaloti Enterprises, according to investigators, received the bulk of the stolen infant formula it bought at greatly reduced prices from two firms in Brooklyn, N.Y., then repackaged and resold it.
No charges against Kaloti
No criminal charges have been filed against Kaloti Enterprises, and an attorney for the firm insists that the formula was not stolen and that investigators misunderstand the nature of a legitimate business practice in which large retailers that find themselves unable to sell merchandise bought in large lots sell the goods in the secondary market to firms such as Kaloti Enterprises.
The indictment filed against the Kenosha man, Fuad Zaher, charges that he and his brothers, Raid Thahir and Murad Daher, repeatedly bought stolen infant formula from a fence in Ohio for their Kenosha store, Mike's Fast and Friendly Food Market. When asked by U.S. regulators to document their formula purchases, the indictment says, they provided falsified documents with the help of the Ohio man, Amjad Salem, indicted in Ohio.
The government contends that the brothers illegally collected more than $400,000 in a one-year period.
The complaint filed against the Milwaukee storekeeper in January charged that he bought stolen formula from out of state fences and subsequently shipped the formula after it was repackaged to wholesalers outside Wisconsin that paid him via check or wire transfers.
The complaint linked the Milwaukee storekeeper to a ring trafficking stolen baby formula in North Carolina, where two men indicted on federal charges implicated the storekeeper.
The complaint, which had been under seal, was dismissed Feb. 26 in exchange for the man's cooperation, according to an affidavit filed in federal court.
Our government enforcing baby formula bootlegging...
BUT NOT THE BORDER OR ILLEGALS!!!
In my day we called them democrats....
What the reporter does not say is illuminating. He says after 9/11, the gov’t started looking at these operations. What he doesn’t say is they are all run by immigrants from the middle east, primarily palestinians. I think the gov’t knows this criminal activity is helping fund terrorism, but has kept a lid on it.
If you want to connect some dots, please realize that Mr Kaloti is treasurer of the Islamic Center of Milwaukee. The religous director of that center is a Dr Zulfiqar Ali Shah.........From FRONTPAGE there is this on the good doctor........When the Toledo charity KindHearts was shut down this past February, for raising millions of dollars for Hamas, the group’s leaders got off scott free. One of those leaders was KindHearts’ President, Khaled Smaili. Another was KindHearts’ South Asia Director, Zulfiqar Ali Shah. Unlike Smaili, who has remained virtually silent since the closure, Shah has continued to bask in the spotlight. He now sits in his new digs in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Religious Director of a large Islamic institution and the toast of the media. Today, the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee will be sponsoring a Shah talk, taking place at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church.
Zulfiqar Ali Shah, a Pakistani-born Muslim, is the ultimate dichotomy. He received his PhD in comparative religion at Wales University in England, while obtaining his Masters degree in Shariah law from the Islamic University in Islamabad, respectively a subject that holds no tolerance for other religions from a location where religious diversity is nonexistent.
Contradictions follow Shah everywhere he goes. In a response to a November 2004 article about a lawsuit derived from the wrongful eviction of a Christian group, from land occupied by Shah’s then-Islamic propagation center – the Universal Heritage Foundation (UHF) – he took the time to defend his empathy for other religions. He stated, “I have befriended many Rabbis, Ministers and Pastors and still enjoy close and brotherly relations with many of them.”
Unfortunately, Shah’s love for his fellow man was not manifest, when, just a few years prior, in June of 2001, he spoke of a wild conspiracy regarding Jews retaking the Saudi city of Medina. He said, “If we are unable to stop the Jews now, their next stop is Yathrib (The Prophet’s city of Medina), where the Jews used to live until their expulsion by Prophet Muhammad. That’s the pinnacle of their motives.”.....And we wonder why the gov’t is interested in the baby formula ring?
I am so frikkin’ fed up with these people, their names, their criminal ways, their religion, their devious hearts.
Want to bet that each one of these thieves has all the paperwork in order, have all the legitimacy they need to be here in the U.S. for the “domestic jihad”?
Every time someone pumps gas or buy groceries from a Middle Eastern Muslim enterprise, they are emboldened. Those two doctors in the flaming Glasgow Jeep were probably very nice to all their patients. When they exited the Jeep, they threw gasoline around to try and kill as many people as possible. THEY ALL NEED TO GO.
Just google Dr Zulfiqar Ali Shah if you want MUCH more info on his past.
These situations always seem to be just the tip of the iceberg when finally released to the public.
And those that have been shouting it from the rooftops even prior to 9/11 are labeled “bigots” and “haters.”
It’s maddening.
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