From: "Rich Gauszka" 




"Mike N."  wrote in message
news:7452e2dfqdtfhug4v0oc9cd4hrfbapn4r5{at}4ax.com...
> On Mon, 14 Aug 2006 19:34:47 -0400, "Gary Britt"
 wrote:
>
>>Where are these cell phones sold, USA or overseas?  Whose buying them
>>rather
>>than go to the local Wal-Mart themselves?  Why only Arabs exploiting this
>>"opportunity"?
>
>  And if they are indeed reselling them, what a bunch of dummies as
> businessmen!   Why buy in qty 1,000 retail when they could get a
> significant break on that quantity by buying directly from Tracfone.
>
>  More likely, they are just adding a level of obfuscation for purchasing
> and reselling untraceable cell phones.

But I thought Gary Britt  loved the entrepreneur spirit?
'An independent entrepreneur will buy the phones for, say, $8 each. He will
sell them to a distributor for $12, making a $4 profit. Multiply that by a
thousand -- about the number of phones the three men arrested in Caro
bought in total -- and you have a $4,000 profit.'

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060814/NEWS05/608140339/1007/
NEWS05
It may seem unusual for someone to buy hundreds of cell phones at a time,
but metro Detroiters of Middle Eastern descent say that practice is part of
a long tradition of entrepreneurship in Arab-American communities.

From Dearborn to Troy to Sterling Heights, Arab Americans are a major part
of the cell phone business in southeastern Michigan. At least half of the
cell phone businesses in the region are owned by metro Detroiters of Arab
or Chaldean descent, say business owners in the industry. Many new
immigrants or emerging businessmen earn money by buying the cell phones and
then selling them to gas stations, distributors or stores.

It's called capitalism, Arab Americans say.

In Michigan, "you can talk to almost any family in the Arab-American
community, and they all have some relative in the cell phone
business," said Warren David, a Lebanese American from Northville.

If police knew that, perhaps five Arab Americans would not have been
arrested last week on terrorism charges after they bought hundreds of cell
phones, said David, who recently sold his cell phone business to an Iraqi
American.

"If they understood us a little more, they might not jump the gun so
quickly," he said.

In Ohio on Tuesday, a store employee called police after two 20-year-old
Arab-American men from Dearborn bought a large number of cell phones at a
Wal-Mart. The same thing happened Friday in Caro after three Arab-American
men bought 80 phones at one store.

In the Ohio case, Osama Abulhassan and Ali Houssaiky were just trying to
make money by buying cell phones so they could sell them to a distributor
for a profit, family members said.

"The two young men were engaged in a perfectly legal practice based on
the most fundamental principles of our free market economy," the
Abulhassan family said in an e-mail.

Here's how the practice sometimes works, said Nasser Beydoun, head of the
Dearborn-based American Arab Chamber of Commerce:

An independent entrepreneur will buy the phones for, say, $8 each. He will
sell them to a distributor for $12, making a $4 profit. Multiply that by a
thousand -- about the number of phones the three men arrested in Caro
bought in total -- and you have a $4,000 profit.

The distributor then will sell the phones at a higher price to gas station
owners, who in turn sell them at a marked-up price.

Many people of Arab descent "are traders by nature," Beydoun
said. "That entrepreneurship should not be linked to terrorism just
because they are Arab American."

For more than 100 years, the Arab-American community has tried to turn a
profit on everything from trinkets to watches to electronic goods.

In the 1980s, David recalled, blue jeans were the hot item. And his
Lebanese immigrant grandfather often bought and sold hosiery to make a
living.

In metro Detroit, Arab Americans are believed to dominate the cell phone
industry not only on the retail level, but also when it comes to wholesale
dealers and accessory stores. Two of the area's biggest cell phone chains
-- Wireless Toyz and Wireless Giant -- are owned by Iraqi Chaldeans.

This practice also occurs with other goods. In Dearborn, for example,
Arab-American entrepreneurs buy and sell incense, lighters and flowers.

There's a concern that what happened in Ohio and Caro could hurt
Arab-American business owners.

Abed Ayoub, 26, a Dearborn resident who often works on legal issues, said
he knows of at least two cases in recent months in which FBI agents
questioned Arab Americans after they purchased large numbers of cell phones
from stores.

"They're just doing business, nothing more," Ayoub said.

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