Man going to jail for selling untaxed cigarettes…
The good news for a Northwest Knoxville convenience store operator? He has convinced the FBI he’s not a terrorist.The bad news? He’s going to prison anyway.What started four years ago as a probe into Hazam Ali Ahmed’s boast of ties to al-Qaida and talk of blowing up a mall in an act of holy war ended Thursday with Ahmed’s guilty plea to an unholy pursuit – hawking tens of thousands of untaxed cigarettes to convenience store operators in East Knoxville and Detroit.Ahmed, 38, admitted at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan to a slew of charges, including heading up two separate cigarette smuggling operations that robbed tax coffers in Tennessee and Michigan of nearly $500,000 in tobacco taxes.
Ahmed, who operated the Central Convenience Store on Keith Avenue, first came under scrutiny by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force when an informant captured him on audiotape making a recruitment pitch for al-Qaida and chatting up the idea of blowing up a mall in an act of a holy war.
But defense attorney Scott Green told Varlan at Thursday’s hearing that Ahmed, a naturalized citizen who has been in the U.S. for 25 years, was no longer considered a terror suspect.”When Mr. Ahmed was interrogated, he denied any intent to commit terroristic acts,” Green said, adding Ahmed voluntarily submitted to a polygraph. “I’m happy to report he passed that polygraph with flying colors.”
Green added that Ahmed “made the statements” at issue but had neither the means nor the desire to carry them out.Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Theodore said Ahmed, who has a prior cigarette smuggling conviction, “believed” he was buying stolen cigarettes from a supplier who apparently was working for federal officials. The cigarettes “either had counterfeit tax stamps, were not stamped at all (or) had other states’ stamps” on them, Theodore said.
Ahmed sold more than 20,000 cartons of the untaxed smokes to Detroit co-conspirators, who were able to undercut competitors and, therefore, sell more cigarettes and avoid Michigan’s $2 per pack tax, Theodore said.
Ahmed sold more than 13,000 untaxed cartons to Savway and Wholesale Outlet store operators Iqbal and Abdul Bhimani, according to Theodore. Both stores are located in East Knoxville. The Bhimanis have not yet been charged but are named as co-conspirators in Ahmed’s plea agreement. Tennessee charges a tax of 62 cents for each pack of cigarettes sold.Ahmed also admitted three incidents in which he had handguns in his possession despite being a felon as well as charges of money laundering, interstate transportation of stolen goods and possession of counterfeit tax stamps.