Prosecutors say two DC men impersonated in connection with a ‘risk to national security’

WASHINGTON – Two men accused pretending to be a federal agent while “beautiful gifts” for Secret Service agents assigned to the White House pose “a threat to national security” and should be held without bail pending trial, federal prosecutor said Friday.

Prosecutors said Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 35, of Washington, DC, “did not merely play dress-up”. in a memo urged a judge to keep the couple locked. “Their scheme of impersonation was realistic enough to convince other government employees, including law enforcement officers,” that their counterfeiting was legitimate, according to court documents.

Prosecutors said both men had firearms, ammunition, armor and tactical equipment, as well as surveillance equipment, and that they “engaged in conduct that demonstrated a serious threat important to the public, compromise the operations of federal law enforcement, and create a potential risk to national security.”

Taherzadeh and Ali, who both appeared mostly at bail hearings on Friday, were charged with impersonating Department of Homeland Security employees. Both pleaded not guilty or pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors pointed to multiple potential charges in what they described as a complex, multi-year scheme that included gaining access to Secret Service agents assigned to the White House and first Lady Jill Biden.

Prosecutors wrote in their memo, adding that Taherzadeh allegedly admitted “he provided ‘a doomsday bag,’ a generator, a flat-screen television, two iPhones, a machine drones, a gun cabinet, a Pelican (gun) case, and a mattress for USSS agents and officers.”

Prosecutor Joshua Rothstein told Judge G. Michael Harvey at the bail hearing: “It is a serious offense and there is a serious danger. “They trick people whose job is to be suspicious of others.”

Four Secret Service The FBI said in a filing with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for the District of Columbia. The detailed representative for the first lady is among them get a leave of absencesaid senior law enforcement officials.

Prosecutors argued that Taherzadeh and Ali both pose a risk of flying and posing “a danger to the public if they use and possess firearms and other weapons”.

Ali made two trips to Iran “not long before the alleged operation began” and has also traveled in recent years to Iraq, Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and Pakistan, where he was born, Prosecutors said, treating his case as a particularly “serious” flight. risk.

He is said to have told a witness in the case that he had ties to the Pakistani intelligence agency. “Until this complaint can be investigated further and given the nature of Ali’s conduct, namely, impersonating a federal law enforcement agency to infiltrate and infiltrate the network of law enforcement officers. federal law and other federal employees, his complaint must be taken literally and seriously,” prosecutors said, adding that if he absconded, it “could” cause significant damage to our national security.”

Taherzadeh told investigators that Ali “funded most of their day-to-day operations but Taherzadeh did not know the source of the funds,” according to the memo.

In addition to a large memory of guns, ammunition, tactical gear and items such as brass knuckles, currency counters and fingerprint sets, the couple also owns five apartments in a residential building. DC area, where many law enforcement officers live, the FBI said.

Prosecutors said the apartments were obtained through Taherzadeh’s company, known as US Special Forces. The building’s owner, Congressional Square Owner LLC, said in a separate civil court filing last year that the company leased the apartments in 2020 for the purpose of subletting them to third parties, but later that never paid any rent or construction fees.

The homeowner was granted a $222,000 no-judgment against US Special Forces in February. It is not clear whether the sentence will be paid. An attorney for the building did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The landlord’s lawsuit was first reported by Memorandum of exchange points.

At Friday’s detention hearing, Rothstein said he believed Taherzadeh and Ali were in the process of being deported when they were arrested earlier this week.

The criminal complaint said they had installed surveillance cameras inside the apartment.

Taherzadeh told investigators that Ali had “obtained an electronic access code and a list of all the tenants in the apartment complex” and that agents searching their apartment found a pad containing apartment numbers and contact information for residents, according to the memo.

Prosecutors have said they want Taherzadeh to be held in part because they fear he could tamper with witnesses and evidence. They noted that after learning he was under investigation, he began “deleting social media posts related to law enforcement” and turned off GPS tracking on his iPhone.

Prosecutors also noted that he should not have had access to any firearms, as he had a domestic violence conviction in 2013. Taherzadeh’s possession of a firearm or even a volley of ammunition is a no-brainer. illegal, they wrote.

“Like liars who have practiced deception for a long time – cooking up completely fake personalities and positions, elevating themselves with imaginary hypotheses to rise above the law and above the law. others – they cannot be trusted to return to court, stop making efforts to obstruct an investigation, nor simply reassemble or use an arsenal similar to the one they already have. fabricated here,” prosecutors concluded in the memo.

Rothstein added in court that prosecutors found a trash bag containing documents and scraps of paper while searching their apartment. He also told the judge that investigators were uncertain about the purpose of the plan and that authorities were still looking into the source of their funds.

The judge ordered the hearing to continue on Monday and urged the government to try to find more answers in the meantime.

“This is a complicated case. Harvey said.

ADJUSTED (April 8, 2022, 5:45 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misrepresented Taherzadeh and Ali’s claim for five properties in a DC-area building. They rent them out; they don’t own them.

at Blogtuan.info – Source: nbcnews.com – Read the original article here