St. Paul Pioneer Press
While
convicted fraudster Khaffak Ansari heads back to Minnesota to face new
charges, federal officials say they will be investigating how he could
travel to Belize.
The issue: He had a passport. He wasn't supposed to.
A federal magistrate in May 2011 ordered Ansari to surrender his
passport as a condition of his release while he awaited trial. He'd been
charged in a food-stamp fraud scheme that cost taxpayers $2.5 million.
U.S.
Magistrate Jeanne Graham was so insistent Ansari turn over his passport
that on the form where it says the defendant must "surrender any
passport to Pretrial Services as directed," she crossed out "as
directed," wrote "immediately" and underlined it.
But
when Ansari got into trouble in San Pedro, Belize, on Sept 6 -- a
female employee told police that he held her against her will -- he had
his passport. The local paper, the San Pedro Sun, even published a photo
of it, open to the page with Ansari's photo and name.
San Pedro is a town of 12,400 on the southern part of Ambergris Caye, an island off the eastern coast of Belize.
Kevin
Lowry, chief probation officer of the District of Minnesota, said he
couldn't say if Ansari gave up his passport because he wasn't allowed to
talk about individual cases.
"Each case belongs to the judge, and it's up to them to release any details," he said. "I can't tell you a whole lot."
John Lucas, the attorney who represented Ansari, said he didn't know for sure if his client surrendered the
document.
"I just sort of assumed that it happened," he said. "I wasn't involved in that exchange."
Ansari, 46, of Arden Hills, owned and operated Stryker Market, a small
grocery in St. Paul's West Side neighborhood. He was accused in a scheme
to bilk the government of money through illegal use of electronic
benefit transfer cards.
In a deal with prosecutors, he pleaded guilty to one count of fraud, while two others were dismissed.
Ansari
was indicted Tuesday for failing to turn himself in to a federal prison
June 11 to start serving a 41-month sentence in the fraud case. A judge
had allowed him to give himself up.
Jeanne Cooney, a U.S. Attorney's Office spokeswoman, said prosecutors probably would look into the passport issue.
As
of the end of business Thursday, no hearing date had been set, and
Cooney said she didn't know if Ansari had arrived back in Minnesota yet.
Six
days before Ansari was to turn himself in, U.S. District Judge Paul
Magnuson of St. Paul recommended to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons that
Ansari be allowed to serve his sentence at the low-security facility in
Petersburg, Va., 120 miles from the man's elderly parents in Durham,
N.C.
The
Bureau of Prisons isn't bound by a judge's recommendation, and they
told Ansari to surrender himself to the federal prison at Fort Dix, N.J.
-- 360 miles from Durham.
Bureau
of Prisons spokesman Chris Burke said that if an inmate doesn't show up
when he is supposed to, the prison notifies the U.S. Marshal's Service
by the end of the day.
He
said he didn't know if that had been done in Ansari's case. A spokesman
for the U.S. marshal's office in Minneapolis did not immediately return
a phone call.
Jorge
Aldana, a reporter for the San Pedro Sun, said police told him that
Ansari had entered the country Aug. 18. He managed two nightclubs -- the
Boatyard Bar, which he was buying, and the Skybox Sports Lounge.
Cpl.
Bietre Avila of the Belize Police Department in San Pedro said a woman
who worked at the Boatyard Bar told police that Ansari told her he was a
wanted man and then held her against her will.
She
escaped and reported the incident to police, who took him into custody.
He acknowledged he was wanted in the United States, and Avila said they
contacted U.S. officials.
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