CAIR Served In Federal Fraud And Racketeering Case

CAIR Served In Federal Fraud And Racketeering Case

Some definite good news on the legal front.

The former "national director" of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)Tahra Goraya was served as a defendant in a Federal RICO case that involves her and a large chunk of CAIR's American leadership:

Goraya served as "national director" of the Council on American-Islamic Relations at the time of the alleged fraudulent scheme perpetrated by CAIR and its national leadership in Washington, D.C.


According to the complaint filed by former CAIR clients in November 2008, Goraya was directly involved in the fraud and cover-up. Goraya apparently resigned fromCAIR sometime after the fraudulent scheme was fully underway and moved back to her home state of California. There she took a job as District Director for California State Senator Carol Liu. Goraya was served with the summons and complaint at Senator Liu'sGlendale offices. She has until June 30th to file her response with the court.


The federal racketeering (or RICO) lawsuit was filed November 18, 2008 in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia by four former CAIR clients.The complaint alleges criminal fraud and racketeering against CAIR, a self-described Muslim public interest civil rights law firm. The lawsuit also names CAIR's national leadership, includingGoraya, as individual defendants.


The lawsuit alleges that Morris Days, who served as the "Resident Attorney" and "Manager for Civil Rights" at the now defunct CAIR chapter inHerndon, Virginia, was in fact not an attorney and that he defrauded hundreds of CAIR clients by failing to provide legal services for which they had paid.


While attorney David Yerushalmi represents the four plaintiffs in this particular lawsuit, two of whom are African American Muslims, the complaint alleges that according to CAIR internal documents, there are hundreds of victims of the CAIR-Days fraud scheme.

According to the complaint, CAIR failed to conduct a background check on Days prior to hiring him and when they did discover his massive fraud, rather than inform their clients and authorities, they immediately set about to conspire with Days to continue the fraud and to cover it up. CAIRofficials purposefully concealed the truth about Days from their clients, law enforcement, the Virginia and D.C. state bar associations, and the media. When CAIR began fielding irate calls from clients about Days' failure to provide competent legal services, CAIR fraudulently deceived their clients about Days' relationship to CAIR, suggesting he was never actually employed byCAIR, and even concealed the fact that CAIR finally fired him for criminal fraud.


"The evidence has long suggested that CAIR is a criminal organization set up by the Muslim Brotherhood andHamas to further its aims of stealth Jihad in the U.S.," Mr. Yerushalmi was quoted at the time of the filing referring to the fact that CAIR has been named by the federal government as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial which led to multiple convictions, including at least one CAIRfounding member and senior executive.

"But our investigation and this complaint make clear thatCAIR's criminal activities know no bounds," Yerushalmicontinued.


"According to the facts as carefully laid out in this complaint," Yerushalmi explained. "CAIR has engaged in a massive cover-up of a criminal fraud in which literally hundreds of CAIR clients have been victimized and because of the CAIR cover-up they still don't realize it. The fact that CAIR has victimized Muslims and non-Muslims alike demonstrates that CAIR is only looking out for CAIR and its ongoing effort to bilk donors out of millions of dollars of charitable donations thinking they are supporting a legitimate organization."

Discovery on this case, which will allow CAIR's internal documents to be examined should prove particularly interesting, and could lead to other indictments.Yerushalmi claims to have heard from additional former CAIRclients and victims and expects to either call them as witnesses or include them as additional plaintiffs.

Aside from covering up Days fraud scheme, the complaint alleges thatCAIR officials in D.C. forced clients who demanded a return of their bogus legal `fees' to sign a release that bought the client-victims' silence by prohibiting them from informing law enforcement or the media about the fraud. According to the release agreement, if the "settling" clients revealed the scam, CAIR would be able to sue them for $25,000:

This enforced code of silence left hundreds of CAIR client-victims in the dark such that to this day they have not learned that Days is not an attorney and that he had not filed the legal actions on their behalf for which Days andCAIR publicly claimed credit.

The complaint identifies CAIR as a racketeering enterprise under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which is a criminal racketeering statute that allows victims to sue the defendants in civil court. In addition to damages, the plaintiffs are seeking injunctive relief under this and other statutes to shut down CAIR and to prevent the individual defendants from engaging in public interest legal work in the future.


The named defendants are: the Council on American-Islamic Relations Action Network Inc. (dba CAIR); NihadAwad aka Nihad Hammad who serves as executive director of CAIR National; Parvez Ahmed who was the chairman of the board of CAIR National during the relevant time period; Tahra Goraya who was the national director of CAIR but who has since resigned; KhadijahAthman who is the manager of the "civil rights" division of CAIR; and Nadhira al- Khalili, Esq., who is in-house legal counsel for CAIR.

(Definitely a few familiar names there, hmmmm? - RM)

According to the complaint, CAIR's in-house Washington, D.C.-based attorney Khalili was directly involved in taking the legal files out of the CAIR Virginia office and concealing them in the D.C. office.

Also named as defendants are Ibrahim Hooper andAmina Rubin, CAIR's director of communications and coordinator of communications, respectively. According to the complaint, these two were directly responsible for issuing fraudulent press releases about the Days fraud scheme, thus aiding and abetting the CAIR cover-up.

My my, Hooper and Rubin too?

Hopefully we'll have heard the last of this Muslim Brotherhood front in thenear future.

(hat tip, Pamela)