CAIR About to Get Pounded

This just in from SANE:

District Director for California State Senator Carol Liu (21^st District) served in a federal fraud and racketeering lawsuit.

June 15, 2009 – Washington, DC: The District Director for California State Senator Carol Liu (D-La Cañada) was served last week in a federal fraud and racketeering lawsuit. Tahra Goraya was served on Wednesday, June 10^th while at work at the state senator’s Glendale office serving the 21^st District.

Goraya served as “national director” of the Council on American-Islamic Relations at the time of the alleged fraudulent scheme perpetrated by CAIR and its national leadership in Washington, D.C.

According to the complaint filed by former CAIR clients in November 2008, Goraya was directly involved in the fraud and cover-up. Goraya apparently resigned from CAIR sometime after the fraudulent scheme was fully underway and moved back to her home state of California. There she took a job as District Director for California State Senator Carol Liu. Goraya was served with the summons and complaint at Senator Liu’s Glendale offices. She has until June 30^th to file her response with the court.

The federal racketeering (or RICO) lawsuit was filed November 18, 2008 in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia by four former CAIR clients. The complaint alleges criminal fraud and racketeering against CAIR, a self-described Muslim public interest civil rights law firm. The lawsuit also names CAIR’s national leadership, including Goraya, as individual defendants.

The lawsuit alleges that Morris Days, who served as the “Resident Attorney” and “Manager for Civil Rights” at the now defunct CAIR chapter in Herndon, Virginia, was in fact not an attorney and that he defrauded hundreds of CAIR clients by failing to provide legal services for which they had paid.

While attorney David Yerushalmi represents the four plaintiffs in this particular lawsuit, two of whom are African American Muslims, the complaint alleges that according to CAIR internal documents, there are hundreds of victims of the CAIR-Days fraud scheme.

According to the complaint, CAIR failed to conduct a background check on Days prior to hiring him and when they did discover his massive fraud, rather than inform their clients and authorities, they immediately set about to conspire with Days to continue the fraud and to cover it up. CAIR officials purposefully concealed the truth about Days from their clients, law enforcement, the Virginia and D.C. state bar associations, and the media. When CAIR began fielding irate calls from clients about Days’ failure to provide competent legal services, CAIR fraudulently deceived their clients about Days’ relationship to CAIR, suggesting he was never actually employed by CAIR, and even concealed the fact that CAIR finally fired him for criminal fraud.

“The evidence has long suggested that CAIR is a criminal organization set up by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas to further its aims of stealth Jihad in the U.S.,” Mr. Yerushalmi was quoted at the time of the filing referring to the fact that CAIR has been named by the federal government as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial which led to multiple convictions, including at least one CAIR founding member and senior executive.

“But our investigation and this complaint make clear that CAIR’s criminal activities know no bounds,” Yerushalmi continued.

“According to the facts as carefully laid out in this complaint,” Yerushalmi explained, “CAIR has engaged in a massive cover-up of a criminal fraud in which literally hundreds of CAIR clients have been victimized and because of the CAIR cover-up they still don’t realize it. The fact that CAIR has victimized Muslims and non-Muslims alike demonstrates that CAIR is only looking out for CAIR and its ongoing effort to bilk donors out of millions of dollars of charitable donations thinking they are supporting a legitimate organization.”

After serving all of the defendants except Morris Days and Tahra Goraya, the plaintiffs learned that Days had died from lung ailments and Goraya had left for California. Because the 120-day time limit to serve the summons and complaint was nearing, the court granted the plaintiffs more time to serve Goraya and this was accomplished last week.

Goraya is the director of the 21st District office of Senator Liu, which serves Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena, La Cañada Flintridge, San Gabriel, Temple City, and the Los Angeles communities of Tarzana, Encino, Reseda, Van Nuys, Sherman Oaks, Studio City, North Hollywood, Silverlake, Los Feliz, Eagle Rock, Echo Park, Atwater Village, and Chinatown.

The CAIR defendants have filed a perfunctory motion to dismiss, which the parties fully briefed and submitted to the court in mid-March of this year. Mr. Yerushalmi said he expects the court’s ruling at any time. When asked about next steps, Mr. Yerushalmi said: “We are fully confident the court will deny the CAIR defendants’ motion and allow discovery to proceed. We are eager to begin examining CAIR’s internal documents and taking testimony. In the meantime, we have heard from additional former CAIR clients and victims and expect to either call them as witnesses or include them as additional plaintiffs.”

The complaint also alleges that in addition to covering up the Days fraud scheme, CAIR officials in D.C. forced angry clients who were demanding a return of their legal fees to sign a release that bought the client-victims’ silence by prohibiting them from informing law enforcement or the media about the CAIR-Days fraud. According to the agreement, if the “settling” clients said anything to anyone about the fraud scheme, CAIR would be able to sue them for $25,000.

This enforced code of silence left hundreds of CAIR client-victims in the dark such that to this day they have not learned that Days is not an attorney and that he had not filed the legal actions on their behalf for which Days and CAIR publicly claimed credit.

The complaint identifies CAIR as a racketeering enterprise under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which is a criminal racketeering statute that allows victims to sue the defendants in civil court. In addition to damages, the plaintiffs are seeking injunctive relief under this and other statutes to shut down CAIR and to prevent the individual defendants from engaging in public interest legal work in the future.

The named defendants are: the Council on American-Islamic Relations Action Network Inc. (dba CAIR); Nihad Awad aka Nihad Hammad who serves as executive director of CAIR National; Parvez Ahmed who was the chairman of the board of CAIR National during the relevant time period; Tahra Goraya who was the national director of CAIR but who has since resigned; Khadijah Athman who is the manager of the “civil rights” division of CAIR; and Nadhira al-Khalili, Esq., who is in-house legal counsel for CAIR.

According to the complaint, CAIR’s in-house Washington, D.C.-based attorney Khalili was directly involved in taking the legal files out of the CAIR Virginia office and concealing them in the D.C. office.

Also named as defendants are Ibrahim Hooper and Amina Rubin, CAIR’s director of communications and coordinator of communications, respectively. According to the complaint, these two were directly responsible for issuing fraudulent press releases about the Days fraud scheme, thus aiding and abetting the CAIR cover-up.

About David Yerushalmi, Esq.

David Yerushalmi has been practicing law for 25 years. He is a litigator specializing in securities law, public policy relating to national security, and public interest law. Mr. Yerushalmi is licensed and practices in Washington D.C., New York, California, and Arizona.