The FBI informant in the Bronx synagogue terror plot helped convict two Albany Muslims on terror-related money-laundering charges three years ago.
Shahed Hussain, 52, an upstate motel owner, turned informant in 2002 after being busted on fraud charges while working as a translator for the Department of Motor Vehicles. The man, who had helped immigrants cheat on driver’s tests, began cooperating with the FBI in a bid to win leniency in court and avoid deportation to Pakistan.
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The informant then posed as an arms buyer who needed to launder money from the sale of a shoulder-launched missile to be used to kill a Pakistani envoy. His act duped Albany pizzeria owner Mohammed Hossain into laundering cash for him, while Yassin Aref, an Albany imam, acted as a witness.
Hossain and Aref were convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Several of the informant’s tenants told The Post that he claims to be a “spy” for the FBI, and that he “blew out of here Tuesday night.” One tenant said the cooperator was on the telephone “a few weeks back . . . telling somebody about buying guns.”
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Aref’s lawyer, Terence Kindlon, called the informant “a liar and a sneak and a trickster.”
Hossain’s lawyer, Kevin Luibrand, said the informant “completely lied” to his FBI handlers about information in the Albany case.
Additional reporting by Brendan Scott in Albany