WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged two males they are saying had been posing as federal brokers, giving unfastened flats and different presents to U.S. Secret Provider brokers, together with one that labored at the first woman’s safety element.
The 2 males — Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 36 — had been taken into custody as greater than a dozen FBI brokers charged right into a luxurious rental construction in Southeast Washington on Wednesday night.
Prosecutors allege Taherzadeh and Ali had falsely claimed to paintings for the Division of Hometown Safety and paintings on a different process pressure investigating gang and violence hooked up to the Jan. 6 revolt on the U.S. Capitol. They allege the 2 posed as regulation enforcement officials to combine with exact federal brokers.
Taherzadeh is accused of offering Secret Provider officials and brokers with rent-free flats — together with a penthouse price over $40,000 a 12 months — together with iPhones, surveillance techniques, a drone, flat display tv, a generator, gun case and different policing equipment, in line with courtroom paperwork.
He additionally presented to allow them to use a black GMC SUV that he known as an “respectable govt automobile,” prosecutors say. In a single example, Taherzadeh presented to buy a $2,000 attack rifle for a Secret Provider agent who’s assigned to give protection to the primary woman.
Prosecutors stated 4 Secret Provider staff had been put on depart previous this week as a part of the investigation.
The plot unraveled when the U.S. Postal Inspection Provider started investigating an attack on a mail service on the rental construction and the boys known themselves as being a part of a phony Hometown Safety unit they referred to as the U.S. Particular Police Investigation Unit.
Prosecutors say the boys had additionally arrange surveillance within the construction and have been telling citizens there that they might get entry to any in their cell phones at any time. The citizens additionally instructed investigators they believed the boys had get entry to to their private knowledge.
Taherzadeh and Ali are scheduled to seem in courtroom on Thursday. It used to be now not instantly transparent if they’d attorneys who may remark at the allegations.
Prosecutors stated the investigation stays ongoing.
