A Great Falls man pleaded guilty on Friday (March 15) to failing to pay $1.8 million to the Internal Revenue Service.
Rick Tariq Rahim, 55, owned and operated several businesses, including laser tag facilities, and he worked as an Amazon reseller, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Virginia.
“From 2015 to 2021, Rahim did not pay to the IRS the taxes withheld from his employees’ paychecks or file the required quarterly employment tax returns reporting those withholdings,” the office said in a press release.
Authorities say Rahim hasn’t filed a personal income tax return since 2012 despite earning more than $34 million in gross income.
In addition, Rahim filed two personal income tax returns where reported owing “substantial” taxes but did not pay them when they were due. When the IRS attempted to contact him, he submitted a false form that omitted assets he owned, including a helicopter, property in Great Falls and a Lamborghini, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
From the press release:
Approximately two weeks later, Rahim transferred ownership of that Great Falls property to his wife. He also paid personal expenses from his business bank accounts, including more than $889,000 toward his mortgages and more than $669,000 to purchase or lease cars, including three different Lamborghinis. In addition, Rahim withdrew more than $1.1 million in cash in amounts less than $10,000 to avoid triggering currency transaction reports from the bank.
His sentencing is scheduled for June 21.
Photo via Google Maps
A man who helped murder a 14-year-old in Holmes Run Stream Valley Park nearly eight years ago will spend a quarter-century in prison for his role in the crime.
Edwin Orellana Caballero was sentenced yesterday (Wednesday) to 25 years in prison — the maximum possible sentence — by U.S. District Judge Rossie D. Alston Jr., the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced.
A member of a local branch of the transnational gang MS-13, Orellana Caballero pleaded guilty to maiming in aid of racketeering activity in November.
Orellana Caballero was 16 years old and a resident of Alexandria when he joined other MS-13 members in attacking the 14-year-old — who’s identified in court documents as S.A.A.T. — in the Lincolnia section of Holmes Run park on Sept. 26, 2016, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“The gang lured S.A.A.T. to Holmes Run Stream Valley Park in Fairfax County and murdered him in a wooded area there with knives, machetes, and a pickaxe,” the news release says. “Orellana Caballero struck S.A.A.T. multiple times with the pickaxe. Once S.A.A.T. was dead, the gang buried him in a shallow grave.”
Police found the 14-year-old’s body inside the park near the intersection of Crater Place and Yellowstone Drive on March 2, 2017 after a tip prompted a two-day search of the area. A second set of remains uncovered in the same area was a 17-year-old identified by federal prosecutors as E.E.E.M.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, E.E.E.M. was lured to Holmes Run Stream Valley Park by MS-13 members on Aug. 28, 2016, because they “erroneously suspected” that he belonged to a rival gang. He was stabbed and cut more than 100 times with knives, a machete and a pickaxe.
A month later, the same individuals targeted S.A.A.T. under the suspicion that he was a police informant.
Seventeen people have been charged in connection with the two murders. Five men who went to trial were convicted of murder and kidnapping by a jury in July 2022, resulting in life-long prison sentences for all of them. Orellana Caballero is one of 10 defendants so far to plead guilty before a trial.
“In so doing, he admitted to participating in S.A.A.T.’s murder for the purpose of maintaining and increasing his position in MS-13,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Orellana Caballero’s sentencing was announced by U.S. Attorney Jessica Aber, Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis and FBI Washington Field Office Special Agent in Charge David Scott.
A McLean resident has pleaded guilty to spending federal COVID-19 relief funds intended for his home business on personal expenses, including gambling and real estate payments.
Mehdi Pazouki, 65, pleaded guilty in federal court on Friday (Feb. 23) to defrauding the Small Business Administration of approximately $455,000 in loans created to help businesses survive during the pandemic, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Eastern District of Virginia.
The office says Pazouki applied for funds from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program between August 2020 and August 2021 that he claimed would be spent on Systems Integration Services Inc., the IT consulting company he ran out of his McLean home.
“He actually intended to, and did, use [the money] to fund his gambling at area casinos, pay down personal debt, and purchase real estate,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
More from the Department of Justice:
Within days of receiving his first EIDL disbursement, Pazouki spent over $27,000 in EIDL money at Hollywood Casino in Charles Town, West Virginia. Pazouki also used the PPP and EIDL money for down payments on two different real estate properties, to pay off his personal credit card debt, and to fund his personal investment account. Pazouki also falsely represented to the SBA in loan forgiveness applications that the PPP money had been used for legitimate business expenses, which resulted in the complete discharge of the loans.
Pazouki could face up to 20 years in prison when he’s sentenced on May 24, though the press release notes that “actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced last August that the Justice Department had recovered over $1.4 billion in COVID-19 relief funds that were allegedly obtained through fraud by over 3,000 defendants.
The PPP and EIDL programs were both created by the CARES Act in 2020 to assist small business owners during the lockdowns and stay-at-home orders implemented early in the pandemic. Up to $659 billion was available for PPP loans, and $224 billion in EIDL grants and loans were approved through February 2021, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which found that at least 3,000 loans totaling about $156 million went to ineligible applicants.
The PPP program ended on May 31, 2021, while the Small Business Administration shut down its application portal for EIDL funds in May 2022.
Photo via Chris Liverani on Unsplash
The man behind Divan in McLean has been sentenced to nearly five years in prison for failing to pay taxes and stealing COVID-19 relief funds — including money used to establish the Persian restaurant.
Gholam “Tony” Kowkabi, 63, of Vienna was sentenced by a federal judge on Monday (Dec. 18) to 57 months in prison after pleading guilty on Aug. 14, the U.S. Attorney’s Office of D.C. announced.
His wife Karen Kowkabi, 64, also pleaded guilty to tax evasion and has been sentenced to 24 months of probation.
The pair has also agreed to pay the $1.35 million that they owe the IRS, and Gholam Kowkabi must pay $738,657 to the Small Business Administration as restitution for the relief funds that he got to support his Georgetown restaurant, Ristorante Piccolo, during the COVID-19 pandemic but spent instead on personal expenses.
“As part of his guilty plea, Mr. Kowkabi acknowledged having spent money intended to help his business on a waterfront condo in Ocean City, Md., as well as personal investments, vacations for his family, and college tuition for his adult children,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
After serving the prison term, Gholam Kowkabi will be on supervised release for three years.
According to prosecutors, the couple avoided paying federal income and employment taxes from 1998 to 2018 “by concealing assets and obscuring…large sums of money” through property purchases, false entries in their business records and the use of business bank accounts to hide personal purchases.
During that time frame, the Kowkabis owned and operated Ristorante Piccolo, which opened in 1986, as well as the restaurants Catch 15 and Tuscana West, which were also located in D.C. Tuscana West, an Italian eatery, closed after 20 years in 2014, while Catch 15 closed in 2018, not long after filing for bankruptcy protection.
According to the press release, Gholam Kowkabi received over $1.6 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds — including Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, an Economic Injury Disaster Loan and Restaurant Revitalization Funds — between May 13, 2020 and July 27, 2021.
Instead of using all the money to cover Ristorante Piccolo’s expenses as intended, he spent more than $500,000 to buy a waterfront condo in Ocean City, over $250,000 to build homes in Great Falls, and over $78,500 to establish Divan, which opened at 1313 Old Chain Bridge Road in December 2021.
Funds were also used to on mortgage payments, vacations, personal legal expenses, home improvements and college tuition payments, according to prosecutors.
Gholam Kowkabi was previously sentenced to 18 months in prison for evading $2 million in D.C. sales taxes.
While Divan is still operating, Ristorante Piccolo has been closed since June after suffering damage from a two-alarm fire, including the collapse of its roof.
(Updated at 6:55 p.m. on 2/28/2024) Another suspect in the 2016 murders of two teens at Holmes Run Stream Valley Park in Lincolnia has pleaded guilty.
Edwin Orellana Caballero, a member of the gang La Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, pleaded guilty yesterday (Wednesday) to one count of maiming in aid of racketeering activity in connection to the kidnapping and killing of a 14-year-old from Alexandria, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced.
An Alexandria resident who was 16 years old at the time, Orellana Caballero is one of 17 people who have been charged in the case, which also involved the murder of a 17-year-old Falls Church resident.
According to the Department of Justice, Orellana Cabellero and other members of an MS-13 clique known as the Park View Locos Salvatrucha kidnapped and killed the 14-year-old, who’s identified only as S.A.A.T., on Sept. 26, 2016.
“The gang lured S.A.A.T. to Holmes Run Stream Valley Park in Fairfax County and murdered him in a wooded area there with knives, machetes, and a pickaxe,” the DOJ said in the press release. “Specifically, Orellana Caballero struck S.A.A.T. multiple times with the pickaxe. Once S.A.A.T. was dead, the gang buried him in a shallow grave.”
Prosecutors have said that S.A.A.T. was targeted based on an unfounded suspicion that he was a police informant. The 17-year-old, identified as E.E.E.M., was killed at Holmes Run park in a similarly brutal manner on Aug. 28, 2016.
Five of the individuals involved in the murders were convicted by a federal jury in July 2022 and received lifetime prison sentences that November. Including Orellana Cabellero, 10 defendants have now pleaded guilty before a trial, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis joined U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District Jessica Aber and Wayne Jacobs, the special agent in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office’s criminal division to announce Orellana Cabellero’s plea after it was accepted by U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston Jr.
Orellana Cabellero is scheduled for sentencing on Feb. 28, 2024. He faces a potential sentence of at least 20 years and at most 25 years in prison.
Image via Google Maps
Three men have been arrested for coercing women into sex work at “high-end” brothels in Massachusetts and Virginia, the Department of Justice announced yesterday (Wednesday).
Locations used for the brothels include units in Hanover Tysons and Avalon Mosaic, apartment buildings in Tysons and Merrifield, according to a court affidavit by a Department of Homeland Security special agent.
Federal prosecutors have charged Massachusetts residents Han Lee and Junmyung Lee as well as California resident James Lee “with conspiracy to coerce and entice to travel to engage in illegal sexual activity,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Massachusetts said in a press release.
According to the DOJ, since at least July 2020, the men enticed primarily Asian women to travel to and work in the brothels, whose clients included “politicians, high tech and pharmaceutical executives, doctors, military officers, government contractors that possess security clearances, professors, lawyers, scientists and accountants.”
Specifically, the defendants allegedly rented high-end apartment complexes as brothel locations, which they furnished and regularly maintained. The monthly rent for the brothel locations were as high as $3,664. It is further alleged that the defendants coordinated the women’s airline travel and transportation and permitted women to stay overnight in the brothel locations so they did not have to find lodging elsewhere, therefore enticing women to participate in their prostitution network.
The locations in Tysons and Merrifield were advertised on a website claiming to be for nude photography models, but the DHS agent says he believes the ads are a “front” for commercial escort or prostitution services.
“Approximately twenty (20) sex buyers were interviewed in connection with this multi-yearlong investigation,” the agent said in the affidavit.
Clients were charged anywhere from $350 up to $600 per hour that they paid in cash, the DOJ says. Prosecutors allege that the defendants concealed “hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash” from the prostitution ring through deposits in their personal bank accounts and “peer-to-peer transfers.”
“Additionally, it is alleged that the defendants regularly used hundreds of thousands of dollars of the cash proceeds from the prostitution business to purchase money orders (in values under an amount that would trigger reporting and identification requirements) to conceal the source of the funds,” the press release said. “These money orders were then used to pay for rent and utilities at brothel locations in Massachusetts and Virginia.”
The defendants could face up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and fines of up to $250,000 under the sex trafficking charges, according to the DOJ.
Han Lee and Junmyung Lee appeared in a federal court in Boston yesterday after getting arrested that morning, while James Lee was arrested in California and “will appear in federal court in Boston at a later date,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
A 58-year-old tax preparer from Mount Vernon was sentenced to 18 months in prison last week for filing fake tax returns for his “unsuspecting” clients, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Lawrence Appiah-Osei pleaded guilty in June to operating the scheme from 2017 to 2020 from his Mount Vernon home, defrauding the U.S. government of more than $1.4 million, according to a release published Friday (Nov. 3) by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Appiah-Osei started his tax preparation business, New Look Enterprise, in 2016, and the following year “executed a scheme to fraudulently inflate the tax refunds of his clients,” the release said.
“Appiah-Osei falsely claimed that his clients operated businesses that lost thousands of dollars each year,” prosecutors said in the release. “These fraudulent losses drove down the clients’ taxable income and increased the clients’ tax refunds.”
The Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation division estimated the tax loss to be nearly $1.5 million, according to court records.
Image via Google Maps
A 32-year-old man from Groveton pleaded guilty on Thursday (Nov. 2) to defrauding the government of more than $1.4 million in fraudulent pandemic-related Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and unemployment benefits.
George Mensah, Jr., 32, admitted in federal court to wire and mail fraud by collecting fees with two unnamed conspirators through CashApp, Zelle and bank transfers, according to court records. The scheme ran from Oct. 2020 to Sept. 2021, during which time Mensah admitted to preparing dozens of fake PPP loans and unemployment insurance claims under the CARES Act.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia:
Mensah admitted that he and his coconspirators prepared and submitted over 47 applications for PPP loans for fake businesses. At least 21 of these applications were funded by lenders, which caused an actual loss of at least $583,172. In addition, Mensah admitted that he and his co-conspirators obtained the personally identifiable information of others, including identity theft victims, in order to make claims for pandemic unemployment benefits in Virginia and elsewhere. Mensah admitted that he and his co-conspirators obtained at least $658,952 in fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance and pandemic benefits.
Mensah admitted to committing the schemes from three locations — an apartment in Springfield, an apartment in Tysons and from his parents’ home in Groveton.
“The defendant and his coconspirators created false tax returns, including Schedule C forms, and fake bank statements to accompany the fraudulent PPP loan applications,” according to court records.
Mensah admitted to collected fees through CashApp accounts and bank transfers, according to court records. Additionally, he admitted to receiving at least 20 Way2Go prepaid debit cards from the Virginia Employment Commission.
The maximum penalty for the offense is 30 years in prison, a $1 million fine, or twice the gross gain or loss, full restitution, forfeiture of assets and a maximum supervised release term of five years, according to court records. Mensah also agreed to pay the government back $1.5 million.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kimberly Shartar and Kathleen Robeson and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Ezra Spiro.
Mensah will be sentenced on Feb. 14.
Image via Google Maps. This story was previously published by FFXnow’s sister site ALXnow.
A 29-year-old man from Annandale will spend the rest of his life in federal prison after he was sentenced on Friday (Aug. 4) for participating in and helping cover up the murder of a fellow gang member.
Sentenced by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Prince George’s County, Maryland, Jose Henry Hernandez-Garcia was convicted of racketeering, murder and conspiracy to destroy and conceal evidence on Dec. 16, 2022 after a two-week trial.
According to the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office, Hernandez-Garcia and at least three other members of the international gang MS-13 stabbed and killed an unnamed victim at the house of Jose Domingo Ordonez-Zometa — allegedly their branch’s leader — in Landover Hills, Maryland, on March 8, 2019.
Ordonez-Zometa had called a meeting to discuss suspicions that the victim was working with the police, prosecutors said in a news release.
During the questioning, Hernandez-Garcia, his co-defendants and at least one other MS-13 member assaulted Victim 1, based on their incorrect suspicions that Victim 1 was cooperating with law enforcement. They also assaulted another MS-13 member who attempted to defend Victim 1. The assault culminated with Ordonez-Zometa, as LGCS clique leader, ordering that Victim 1 be killed. Hernandez-Garcia, [Jose Rafael] Ortega-Ayala, and other MS-13 members then stabbed and murdered Victim 1 in Ordonez-Zometa’s basement.
According to trial testimony, after the murder, Ordonez-Zometa ordered Hernandez-Garcia, Ortega-Ayala, and other LGCS clique members and co-conspirators, to conceal and destroy evidence of the murder. Ortega-Ayala and other MS-13 members transported the body of the victim to a secluded location in Stafford County, Virginia, and set the victim’s body on fire, then destroyed and concealed evidence of the murder from the vehicle used to transport the victim. Meanwhile, Ordonez-Zometa, Hernandez-Garcia, and another MS-13 member stayed at the crime scene and attempted to remove, destroy, and conceal evidence of the murder, including the blood of Victim 1.
Ordonez-Zometa and Ortega-Ayala were also convicted in December. The former was given life in prison on March 6, while the latter could get the same sentence at a hearing on Sept. 25.
This isn’t the first time a Fairfax County resident has been convicted of a murder tied to MS-13 activities. Last November, five people were sentenced to life in prison for killing two teens at Holmes Run Stream Valley Park in Annandale in 2016.
Photo via Wesley Tingey/Unsplash
An Alexandria man was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Wednesday (May 10) for selling fentanyl to a woman who died from an overdose in Clifton in 2021.
Reza Hashemi, 34, was sentenced for conspiring to distribute over 400 grams of fentanyl in Northern Virginia between July 2020 and June 2021, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release announcing the judgment by U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema.
According to court documents, Fairfax County police were called to a home in the Clifton area on May 28, 2021 by a witness who told 911 that a woman had taken an “unknown white substance” and needed naloxone, the drug that can reverse opioid overdoses.
A woman identified as J.F. was found unresponsive in the residence’s basement and pronounced deceased at 11:44 p.m. after failed resusitation efforts, one of the responding police officers said in an affidavit.
The witness told police that they had obtained powder fentanyl from Hashemi at a spot near Reed Avenue in Alexandria City.
Police arrested Hashemi in Tysons on June 2, 2021 after he dropped off fentanyl that the witness had arranged to buy from him, according to the affidavit.
Court records indicate that Hashemi reached a plea agreement with prosecutors in February.
“Mr. Hashemi became addicted to opioids after suffering trauma early in his life. He accepted responsibility early on in this case and continues to do so,” the Office of the Federal Public Defender in Alexandria, which represented Hashemi, said in a statement. “Although we do not agree that the sentence imposed was necessary, Mr. Hashemi accepts the court’s decision and is determined to address his own addiction through the next 15 years and beyond.”
In announcing the sentencing, the U.S. Attorney’s Office also linked Hashemi to the Oct. 24, 2020, fatal overdose of a 22-year-old man identified as J.V. in Vienna.
Hashemi distributed drugs, including “pressed counterfeit pills containing fentanyl,” to J.V. from Sept. 18, 2020 to “at least” Oct. 14, 2020, according to a statement of facts filed by prosecutors. After police informed him of J.V.’s death, Hashemi said he didn’t want to talk to law enforcement without a lawyer.
Court documents don’t explain how police determined that the drugs involved in J.V.’s overdose were the ones he got from Hashemi. The U.S. Attorney’s Office didn’t respond to FFXnow’s request for comment by press time.
“The government’s repeated insinuations in connection with [Hashemi’s] invocation of his right to counsel misrepresent the facts and betray an ignorance of every individual’s constitutional rights,” the public defender’s office said.
Photo via Google Maps
