unless you happen to have 10 grand in cash on you, but that isn't the MAJORITY of us, so why should we care?
Well I wonder what Nacer Mustafa and his father Fathi Mustafa would have to say about that.
Charges against 2 U.S. citizens dropped after lab tests determine documents not doctored
By Associated Press, 11/21/2001 14:05
LABELLE, Fla. (AP) A man of Palestinian descent was released after being jailed for more than two months when federal authorities dropped charges that he altered his U.S. passport by laminating it.
Nacer Mustafa, 24, had been jailed as a national security risk by federal officials in Texas. The same charges against his father, Fathi Mustafa, 66, also were dropped Tuesday. The elder Mustafa was free on bond and ordered to wear a computerized monitoring device.
A laboratory analysis of the passports determined neither was altered.
''The laboratory analysis showed that the laminate had most likely split and was not an additional laminate,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Hileman wrote in his motion to dismiss the charges.
''You could say this was a miscarriage of justice,'' said Dan Gerson, a Houston attorney representing the family. ''There's a potential here ... to sue the government.''
The Mustafas were arrested Sept. 14 at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston as they entered the United States from Mexico. A federal agent said there was a second layer of lamination on their passports.
Both men are U.S. citizens and run a small department store in LaBelle, east of Fort Myers.
Fathi Mustafa said Tuesday he was glad his and his son's names have been cleared, and that he will soon be reunited with his son. Nacer Mustafa was expected to return home this week.
Fathi Mustafa has spent the last six weeks wearing a computerized ankle bracelet. The Mustafas said they must wait for paperwork from Texas to be sent to the federal courthouse in Fort Myers before the monitoring device can be removed.
''I have been living this hell,'' he said. Fathi Mustafa, a citizen for nearly 40 years, said doesn't understand the treatment by the United States. ''I've known from the first time that nothing was wrong with our passports,'' he said. ''But we don't want to argue right now, we are just thanking God he's out of jail.''
Actually, a sequence of cash transactions that add up to $10k can trigger a report. My Quicken bookeeping has me spending that much cash in less than a year, mostly on small items -- does that make me reportable?