Convicted Conman’s 9/11 Ties Buried in Brooklyn Court
By Kempshall McAndrew
In federal court in Brooklyn on June 2, 2006, Amr “Tony”
Elgindy was sentenced to 11 years for racketeering and securities fraud and
fined $1 million. Elgindy’s economic crimes are numerous. In his most recent
exploit, he is charged with manipulating FBI agents for profit. Elgindy
liquidated $6 million, and attempted to sell $300,000 worth of stock based on
possible prior knowledge of 9/11. Files related to 9/11 have been placed under
a court-ordered seal, with little likelihood they will become available anytime
soon.
Elgindy and his family have a history of supporting known
terrorist organizations through front groups. But what’s really odd is the
federal government’s long, cuddly relationship with Elgindy. The feds often
gave him deals, reduced sentences, and got him work as an informant. Given
Elgindy’s innumerable stock market crimes, his behavior immediately prior to
9/11, and his ties to terrorism, why only an 11 year sentence? His infractions
should have put him away for 30 years or more. Why wasn’t the prosecutor in his
case allowed to introduce evidence related to terrorism at Elgindy’s trial?
Just what is Elgindy’s relationship to terrorism, 9/11, and to the United States
government? His story seems to be the place where all three converge.
Elgindy’s tale begins in the wild world of “short selling”
stocks. “Short selling,” or “shorting,” is when one gambles that a stock will
go down in value. An investor borrows shares from a third party and sells them.
The third party agrees to buy them back, so short sellers only make money if
the stock goes down in price. If the price does go down,the investor buys
shares on the market and returns them to the third party. If the stocks don’t
go down in price, the short seller has to pay up. Elgindy “went short” on
companies he knew something about, thanks in part to his research methods that
often involved vitriolic posts on Internet message boards. In the late ’90s,
FindEx.com was trading at $17 a share before Elgindy posted his analysis of the
stock’s value: “pure shit…very strong smell.” Two weeks later, it was trading
at $6 a share.
Elgindy started out in the early 1990s at various sleazy
penny stock brokerages. After he confessed to stock manipulation it looked as
if Elgindy might go up the river for a while. But instead he became an
informant for the Securities and Exchange Commission against former U.S.
Attorney Andrew Pitt, who was convicted of accepting bribes, conflict of interest,
and wire fraud in 1997. Elgindy avoided spending serious time in jail.
One might think that this brush with the feds would make
him a little nervous. But whatever his flaws, Elgindy doesn’t suffer from
timidity. Even while he was
working as an informant, he was defrauding his former employers by accepting
around $50,000 in disability while employed at two securities companies.
Elgindy was fined $20,000 and did six months in federal prison. In prison he
worked undercover with Department of Justice officials to detect contraband and
prison corruption.
Fresh out of jail, Elgindy moved back to San Diego and
began a subscription website to advise day traders. Elgindy researched
companies, spotted shady activity, and told his thousands of subscribers to sell
them short. But Elgindy’s sources for research included FBI agents Jeffery
Royer and Lynn Wingate, who supplied him with classified information about
companies being investigated. Elgindy would then pass this information on to
his subscribers, even bragging that he had the inside word from the FBI.
Later, hundreds of people associated with these ruined companies called for Elgindy to
be investigated, but prior to 9/11, their cries were ignored. According to his
recent indictment, Elgindy was not above extorting the companies under
investigation either. When the trashed companies later tried to sue Elgindy,
they lost.
Former agent Royer said that while he broke the rules of
the FBI by giving the information to Elgindy, he was doing so to fight crime
and was glad to have Elgindy working with him. Evidence suggests Elgindy wasn’t
only looking out for the general public. When Royer learned Elgindy was the
suspect of two investigations related to 9/11 and terrorism funding, Royer
promised he would keep an eye on further developments in the case. The first
investigation concerned Elgindy’s financial transactions immediately prior to
the 9/11 attacks.
On Sept. 10, 2001, a stock trading message board posting
read in part: “Expect to
lose some operatives no matter how careful you plan and execute this mission.
“It’s a dangerous one, Jimbo, and the
biosuits/helmets/goggles, while protective against the deadly virus, paranoia
helps me tango, they do little to stop those silver bullets. And our NWO
sensors can’t SEE the virus as it does its tango during a biodome blitz.”
This was posted on a site for a company that Elgindy
frequently bashed, Amazon Natural Treasures.com, Inc. Researchers believe that
he reacted by attempting to sell $300,000 in his children’s stock portfolio. He
told his broker the stock market would drop by two-thirds.
Prosecutor Kenneth Breen tried to bring this information
up in this year’s trial, but Judge Raymond Dearie shut him down. Breen warns
reporters that crucial information remains under seal. In an interview with The
Megaphone, Breen said, “If you read our trial transcripts, there were a lot of
discussions about his contacts with FBI agents and the SEC....That certainly is
part of the public record. The issues that you are interested in are issues
that are not.”
Elgindy wasn’t just busy making sure he cashed out before
the largest terrorist incident in United States history. Days before the
attack, Elgindy also wired money to Mercy International. In a recently filed
class-action lawsuit, 9/11 victims’ families sought a trillion dollars in
damages from Mercy and other charities accused of being fronts for bin Laden’s
international terrorist network. Mercy International was tied to the U.S.
embassy bombings in 1998. Notes were found in their offices concerning the
transport of weapons into Somalia, which is detailed in a 2003 National Review
article.
In 2000, Elgindy set up his own fake fundraising group
called Mother Thereza Humanitarian Organization of Skopje. The mission of this
group, he told his followers over Internet message boards, was to help refugees
of the Bosnia/Kosovo conflict into the United States. Elgindy collected
hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations for Mother Thereza, telling those
who contributed that their support was tax deductible. (It most certainly was not.)
With the help of Senator Spencer Abraham, Elgindy was able to get visas for
several individuals, including Rexhep Hoti. This crooked character was an
advisor to the Kosovar Prime Minister, and is associated with the Kosovo
Liberation Army, war crimes, and arms trafficking. In his letter to his
sentencing judge in March 2006, Elgindy writes that he returned from Kosovo and
was “invited to testify before members of Congress and staff” about his trip.
In that 1999 testimony, he said, “I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to help
various relief organizations in the United States with money donations,
connections, support, one of which is the Mother Thereza Foundation.” Fortunate
or not, why would a U.S. stock analyst know or care about someone like Hoti?
In an unsurprising coincidence, a charity group called
Benevolentia International Foundation, which was raided and frozen in the
United States for extensive ties to Osama bin Laden, was active in Bosnia and
affiliated with the KLA during the 80s and 90s. The BIF is also named in the recent 9/11 families lawsuit.
Elgindy’s family seems to be getting into the act as well.
His brother, Khaled Elgindy, was a founding member of the American Muslim
Council, serving on the board with now-imprisoned terrorist financing suspects.
The AMC lashed out at the government for closing the Holy Land Foundation, a
group labeled “terrorists” by the European Union. Holy Land’s assets were
frozen stateside for support of Hamas. Khaled was also involved in the
International Islamic Relief Organization — another group mentioned in the 9/11
families suit. The IIRO donated $60 million dollars to the Taliban, and was
headed by Osama bin Laden’s brother in law in the Philippines. Elgindy’s third
brother, Waleed Elgindy, is a member of the Muslim Student Association – also
associated with al Qaeda charities and with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Despite all of these ties, Tony Elgindy spoke to magazine
reporters and on prime time business news after 9/11. He advised traders not to
weaken an already reeling economy by short selling. This wasn’t Elgindy’s first
brush with the mainstream media. During his short selling heyday, Elgindy was
featured in Businessweek, The Denver Post, ABC’s “20/20,” Wired magazine, and
even on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. He was in multiple books,
and appeared on a number of television shows both in the U.S. and abroad as a
stock analyst.
Elgindy appears in Wall Street Journal reporter John
Emshwiller’s 2000 book Scam Dogs and Mo-Mo Mamas. Emshwiller provides both
sides of Elgindy, calling him, “one of the most extraordinary figures in the
securities industry, and certainly one of the more resilient,” while also
noting, “he knows about the scummy side of Wall Street because he has lived
there and wallowed in it.” Scam Dogs details how Elgindy double-crossed his own
mother by allowing her to invest in a corrupt stock brokerage and then altering
a letter she sent to regulators absolving him of all wrongdoing. Emshwiller implies Elgindy was being
fed information by the government agencies back in 2000, noting his magical
ability to call when stocks came
under SEC investigation. The book
delves deep into Elgindy’s past, and concludes that the only way Elgindy stayed
out of jail was by cooperating with various regulatory agencies.
Are these brushes with the law the actions of a man
knowingly involved in terrorist front organizations? Could Elgindy’s help in
prosecuting District Attorney Pitt, his work for the DOJ and the SEC, and his
media appearances after 9/11 be enough to wipe away his many stock market
crimes? What seems most likely is that Elgindy worked closely with various
government agencies in the hope they were willing to forgive his stock market
shenanigans. As Elgindy said in his letter to the sentencing judge, “I had
worked with govt. agents shoulder to shoulder for years. I knew exactly how
powerful the government was and I was thrilled to be working with them on the
right side.” The nature of the “work” that he provided the government probably wasn’t
limited to exposing corrupt individuals, however. If a person who has ties to
terrorism displays a foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks, few should be
surprised. But when that same person also is tied closely to Wall Street and
the SEC, DOJ, and FBI, the public should demand answers.
Mainstream opinion about who was behind the 9/11 terrorist
attacks is shifting, and skepticism of the official story is gaining traction.
As people begin to demand the full truth about Elgindy and his transactions on Sept. 10, they will have to
confront the lockdown on pertinent details which remain sealed in documents of
the federal court in Brooklyn.
Kempshall McAndrew is a writer in Brooklyn. visit his
website at www.nycscavenger.com or
Email him at kmcandrew@fordhamgrad.com.
Sander Hicks contributed reporting to this article.
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