Pizza Parlor Owner Sentenced for Illegal Money Transfers
The owner of a Hayward pizza parlor was sentenced last week to four months’ home detention and ordered to pay a $5,000 fine after pleading guilty to illegally transferring money to people in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
From 2002 to 2003, Noor Alocozy, 41, transferred $1 million, some of which may have reached Jonathan “Jack” Idema, a now-imprisoned American mercenary accused of running his own interrogation camp in Afghanistan, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Idema, a former Green Beret who said he was working on a counterterrorism mission with the U.S. government, may have been a client of Alocozy’s money-transfer business. The business was operated out of his Liberty Pizza restaurant, authorities said. Idema is in an Afghan prison after being convicted of torturing Afghan detainees.
Alocozy, a native of Afghanistan, pleaded guilty in May to federal charges of illegally transferring money to unidentified individuals in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge D. Lowell Jensen sentenced him to three years’ probation, in addition to the home detention and fine.
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