Lexington Islamic leader pleads guilty to money laundering, conspiracy to kidnapping
A Lexington Islamic leader who was accused last year in connection with an alleged murder-for-hire plot pleaded guilty Monday to some of the charges against him.
Mahmoud Shaker Shalash pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring with at least one other person to kidnap someone, according to court records. He also pleaded guilty to two counts of money laundering, according to court records.
Shalash, the former imam of the Islamic Center of Lexington, was also accused of being involved in a murder-for-hire conspiracy. That count was dismissed as part of the plea agreement, according to court records. He has not been associated with the Islamic Center since May 2019, according to the center.
While Shalash could have faced life in prison in the case, the plea agreement recommends that he be sentenced to four years and three months in prison, five years of supervision upon release and a fine of $20,000. Restitution is not expected to be applied in the case because the accused were “apprehended before members of the conspiracy could harm the victim,” according to the plea agreement.
Shalash is scheduled to be sentenced June 18.
Shalash was charged alongside two others, Abdul Hadi and a man known as John Sadiqullah, though his actual first name is unknown. Hadi and Sadiqullah remain scheduled for trial on Feb. 3, according to court records.
The charges centered around a series of recorded conversations and meetings involving Shalash, Hadi and Sadiqullah in which an informant offered to kidnap and do physical harm to someone who owed the men money, according to court records and testimony at court hearings.
The first meetings with the informant involved the money laundering allegations.
In 2017, Shalash met with a man who said he was running a “business” involving theft, storage, transportation and selling of items that “traveled in foreign and interstate commerce,” according to the plea agreement. The man, who was a law enforcement informant, told Shalash that he needed a “bank” that could launder some of his income.
In February of 2019, the informant delivered $50,000 in cash to Shalash, according to the plea agreement. The informant agreed that Shalash could keep $10,000 as a fee, and Shalash wrote a check for $40,000 to a construction company specified by the informant.
A similar transaction happened between the informant and Shalash in March of 2019, according to the plea agreement.
Also in March of 2019, Shalash told the informant about a person who he thought owed him money, according to the plea agreement. The informant told Shalash that he would be willing to confront and hurt the person in order to collect the debt.
As time went on, Shalash told the informant that someone identified in court records only as “L.E.” owed money to Shalash and a group of others, including Hadi and Sadiqullah, according to the plea agreement.
Shalash told the informant that if Hadi and Sadiqullah “get ahold of [L.E.], they’ll kill him,” according to the plea agreement.
During a meeting, Shalash and the others discussed an agreement to pay the informant to kidnap and harm L.E., according to the plea agreement.
Shalash was accused of further facilitating the proposed kidnapping by sending the informant the victim’s picture and telephone number.
Federal prosecutors said in a recent motion that they’d received new information from a witness about an alleged threat by Hadi.
Hadi allegedly offered to pay $10,000 in early 2019 to a person identified only as K.S. to retrieve money the victim in the case, L.E., owed Hadi, according to the motion.
K.S. turned down the offer.
However, Hadi allegedly later sent a message, referring to the victim, that said, “Hadi will cut his eyes out, find him, F him, teach him a lesson,” according to the prosecution motion.
Prosecutors want to use the information against Hadi at the trial.
This story was originally published January 27, 2020 at 4:37 PM.
