From: "Mark" 

Well, however this whole brouhaha turns out, I'm glad the Wal-Mart cashier
called the cops, I'm glad the cops followed-up and detained the guys. If I
got pulled over with lots of cash and 100s of pre-paid cell phones bought
in a variety of Wal-Marts thousands of miles from my home, I'd expect to be
taken in too. 

"Gary Britt"  wrote in message
news:44e12329{at}w3.nls.net...
> Rich, the claim below they are being sold to local gas stations, etc.
> seems completely insane to me.  Why buy from gas station when you can buy
> the same phone for less at Wal-Mart.  If the phones were being converted
> to something not sold at Wal-Mart or being shipped overseas, then at least
> the "its just an innocent business" claim might make some
sense, but it
> makes no sense at all that Arabs in Dearborn would rather pay higher price
> to gas station than buy from the Wal-Mart next door.
>
> Gary
>
> "Rich Gauszka"  wrote in message
> news:44e11943{at}w3.nls.net...
>>
>>
>>
>> "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/NEWS05/608140339/10
07/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.
>>
>>
>
>

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5