Maruan Muhareb, 18; Adham Othman, 21; and Louai Othman, 23, all of the Dallas area, were charged in Bay City with conspiracy to defraud consumers and telephone providers by trafficking in counterfeit goods. They also were charged with money laundering on suspicion that they used proceeds from the counterfeit cell phone transactions to buy more phones.

So if you are going to resell your lawful property, I suppose you ought to sand off the TracFone logo, assuming it does not still work with TracFone. So am I to assume that the Attorney Jackass considered theses phones as “counterfeit goods”, not because the corporate logos were put on, but because they weren’t taken off?

Hell, had they even gotten to the part where they wiped the firmware yet? Or is this just “conspiracy” to convert actual goods to “counterfeit goods” some time in the future?

The federal complaint contains no mention of terrorism. It alleges that the three men defrauded consumers, TracFone Wireless Inc. and Nokia Corp.

Florida-based TracFone sells prepaid cell phones with a limited number of minutes at subsidized prices. It makes money when buyers purchase additional minutes.

Teh, like I said, used the fucking government to prop up your crappy business model.

Authorities said they found airplane passenger lists and information on airport security checkpoints along with the cash and cell phones in the car.

It must be easer to plant a few pages of printouts rather than to do the drug plant standard mischief.

At this point, even if the government showed me a link to how these people were diverting their legitimate profits to some kind of Muslim charity, I’d still hang the jury. These government minions are the ones that need to be spanked.

The men initially were charged with supporting terrorism after buying large numbers of cell phones. Those charges were dropped, but the men still face misdemeanor counts stemming from allegations that they lied to deputies.

Ah, the “Martha Steward” option.