Pakistani gets 3-year sentence in fund-transfer case

A Pakistani national who illegally funneled more than $2.1 million to family members and others in Pakistan was sentenced yesterday in federal district court to three years behind bars.

Habib Khan, 49, a hot-dog vendor who helped members of the Pakistani community here wire money back home for a fee, also was ordered by U.S. District Judge Joel Slomsky to forfeit $126,000, which includes a house on Moyamensing Avenue near Wolf Street in South Philadelphia and $10,451 in cash that was seized when he was arrested in February.

Khan had been wiring money to people who lived in an area known as the Swat Valley, which was until recently a Taliban stronghold, according to published reports.

Defense attorney Barnaby C. Wittels said before sentencing that prosecutors were trying to falsely "insinuate" that Khan had given aid and comfort to the Taliban. Khan was not charged with providing material support to terrorists.

The government's sentencing memo said that Khan had admitted to the feds that one of his customers paid ransom for a family member who had been kidnapped and that the Taliban often kidnap people in the Swat region to get money to pay for guns and other supplies to support their insurgency.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen A. Miller said Khan's actions had posed "a national security risk" to the United States by "creating a vehicle" to send millions of dollars to a dangerous area under the radar of law enforcement and banking officials.

Wittels said the feds were resorting to "fear-mongering" in an effort to paint Kahn as a handmaiden of the Taliban.

Khan, who's been in federal custody since February, pleaded guilty in April to operating an unlicensed and unregistered money-transmitting business and structuring financial transactions to circumvent the filing of currency-transaction reports.

He accumulated cash in a bank account here between November 2001 and February 2009. Khan told authorities he had serviced the Pakistani community here and charged a fee of $60 for every $1,000 he wired to Pakistan.

The feds said Khan deposited the money in a bank account in increments of less than $10,000, the threshold at which banks must file currency-transaction reports.

The money was then wired to a bank in Mingora, Pakistan, where Khan's two brothers picked it up and distributed it, court papers said.

Once Khan completes his sentence, he likely faces deportation by U.S. immigration and customs authorities.