BAY CITY, Mich.—Terrorism-related charges have been dropped against three young men who purchased hundreds of phones in northern Michigan. However, the men now reportedly face charges of defrauding customers, Tracfone Wireless Inc. and Nokia Corp.
The men—brothers Adham and Louai Othman and their cousin Maruan Muhareb, all from Texas—were recently arrested after attempting to buy 80 prepaid Tracfone phones at a Michigan Wal-Mart, and police found about 1,000 phones in their van.
Law enforcement officials initially pointed out that the phones could be used as detonators, and that photographs of the five-mile long Mackinac Bridge were found in the men’s van. However, the men’s families insisted that the pictures were innocent tourist photos and that the men had no connection to terrorism; they were just trying to buy cell phones cheaply and sell them at a profit to a wholesaler in Texas.
While the charges related to terrorism have been dropped, the Associated Press reported that the men now face charges of conspiracy to defraud customers and telephone providers by trafficking in counterfeit goods, along with money-laundering charges for possibly using the profits from selling unlocked phones to buy more phones to hack.
“This is a clear indication of racial profiling: Picking someone up and holding them for days and trying to find something to charge them with. It’s supposed to be the other way around,” the men’s attorney, Nabih Ayad, told the AP.
In the past nine months, Tracfone filed and resolved two complaints against Florida residents operating much the same way: buying Nokia handset cheaply at stores such as Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club, then hacking the phones’ software so that they could be run on other operators’ networks and reselling them. Tracfone won permanent injunctions against the practice in both cases, according to court documents.
