Awan was captured at the Dulles airport while attempting to flee the country.
He has been charged with bank fraud.
Pakistani-born brothers Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan are part of a criminal investigation by U.S. Capital Hill Police and the FBI.
Allegations range from overcharging taxpayers for congressional IT equipment to blackmailing members of Congress with secrets captured from their emails.
The Awan brothers are Pakistani IT specialists.
They worked for more than 30 house and senate democrats, including Schultz.
FBI agents seized a number of "smashed hard drives" and other computer equipment from their former residence in Virginia.
Pakistani-born Imran Awan and three of his relatives had access to the emails and files of the more than two dozen House Democrats who employed them on a part-time basis.
Imran was first employed in 2004 by former Democrat Rep. Robert Wexler (FL) as an “information technology director”, before he began working in Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s office in 2005.
The family was paid extremely well, with Imran Awan being paid nearly $2 million working as an IT support staffer for House Democrats since 2004.
Abid Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi, were each paid more than $1 million working for House Democrats.
Since 2003, the family has collected nearly $5 million.
On March 22, 2016, eight democrat members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a letter requesting that their staffers be granted access to Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI).
Signers included representatives Jackie Speier (CA) and Andre Carson (IN), the second Muslim in Congress, both of whom employed the Awan brothers.
The brothers were also employed by members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, such as: Jackie Speier (D-CA), Andre Carson (D-IN), Joaquín Castro (D-TX), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Robin Kelly (D-IL), and Ted Lieu (D-CA).
Lieu has since openly called for leaks by members of President Trump's administration -- not exactly a Trump supporter !
Imran Awan had access to Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s iPad password, so the brothers most likely had direct access to the allegedly "hacked" DNC emails.
The brothers are accused of removing hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment from congressional offices, including computers and servers.
They are also accused of a procurement scheme buying equipment, and then overcharging the House administrative office that assigns such contractors to members.
Some other congressional information technology aides believe that the Awan’s are blackmailing representatives based on the contents of their emails and files.
They point out these representatives have had unusual intense loyalty towards the former aides.
Bank fraud was the stated charge on which Awan was arrested at Dulles Airport this week, trying to flee the United States for Pakistan, via Qatar.
That was the route taken by Awan’s wife, Hina Alvi, in March 2017, when she suddenly fled the country, with three young daughters yanked out of school, mega-luggage, and $12,400 in cash.
By then, proceeds of the fraudulent $165,000 loan they’d gotten from the Congressional Federal Credit Union had been sent ahead.
It was part of a $283,000 transfer that Awan wired from Capitol Hill by pretending to be his wife in a phone call with the credit union.
Told that his proffered reason for the transfer (“funeral arrangements”) wouldn’t fly, “Mrs.” Awan then claimed “she” was “buying property.”
Asking no more questions, the credit union wired the money to Pakistan.
Awan and his family had access for years to the e-mails and other electronic files of members of the House’s Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees.
They were accessing members’ computers without their knowledge, transferring files to remote servers, and stealing computer equipment — including hard drives that were later smashed.
They were fired in February 2017, except Awan.
Awan continued in the employ of Wasserman Schultz, the Florida Democrat, former DNC chairwoman, and Hillary Clinton crony.
She kept him at work for the United States Congress right up until he was nabbed at the airport.
At the time of his arrest, the 37-year-old Imran Awan had been working for Democrats as an information technologist for 13 years.
He started out with Representative Gregory Meeks (D., N.Y.) in 2004.
The next year, he landed on the staff of Wasserman Schultz, who had just been elected to the House.
Congressional-staff salaries average about $40,000.
Awan was paid about four times as much.
He also got his wife, Alvi, on the House payroll . . . and then his brother, Abid Awan . . . sand then Abid’s wife, Natalia Sova.
Awan’s brother Jamal, came on board in 2014, as a 20-year-old with an amazing annual salary of $160,000.
Some Awans were rarely seen around the office.
The Capitol Police and FBI are exploring widespread double-billing for computers, other communication devices, and related equipment.
Why were they given access to highly sensitive government information?
That requires a security clearance, awarded only after a background check that peruses ties to foreign countries, associations with unsavory characters, and vulnerability to blackmail.
These characters could not possibly have qualified.
The family controlled several properties and was involved in various suspicious mortgage transfers.
Abid Awan, while working “full-time” in Congress, ran an auto-retail business called “Cars International A” (yes, CIA), through which he was accused of stealing money and merchandise.
In 2012, he discharged debts with a bankruptcy (while scheming to keep his real-estate holdings).
Congressional Democrats hired Abid despite his drunk-driving conviction a month before he started at the House, and they retained him despite his public-drunkenness arrest a month after.
Beyond that, he and Imran both committed many vehicular offenses.
In civil lawsuits, they are accused of life-insurance fraud.
Democrats now say access to sensitive information was “unauthorized.”
But how hard could it have been to get “unauthorized” access when House Intelligence Committee Dems they wrote a letter to an appropriations subcommittee seeking funding so their staffers could obtain “Top Secret — Sensitive Compartmented Information” clearances?
TS/SCI is the highest-level security classification.
Awan family members were working for a number of the letter’s signatories.
The ranking member on the appropriations subcommittee to whom the letter was addressed was Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Why were Wasserman Schultz and her fellow Democrats so indulgent of the Awans?
A probe began in late 2016.
The Awans started arranging a fraudulent credit-union loan in December 2016, and the $283,000 wire transfer occurred on January 18, 2017.
In early February 2017, House security services informed representatives that the Awans were suspects in a criminal investigation.
investigators found stolen equipment stashed in the Rayburn House Office Building, including a laptop that appears to belong to Wasserman Schultz that Imran was using.
Although the Awans were banned from the Capitol computer network, Wasserman Schultz kept Imran on staff for several additional months, and Meeks retained Alvi until February 28, 2017 — five days before she fled to Lahore.
On March 5, 2017, the FBI and Capitol Police got to Dulles Airport in time to stop Alvi before she embarked.
She was carrying $12,400 in cash.
It is a felony to export more than $10,000 in currency from the U.S. without filing a currency transportation report, and Alvi did not file one.
The FBI submitted to the court a complaint affidavit that describes Alvi’s flight but makes no mention of a currency transportation report.
Agents permitted her to board the plane and leave the country, in spite of their stated belief that she has no intention of returning.
No arrests were made when the scandal became public in February.
For months, Imran has been strolling around the Capitol.
Wasserman Schultz has been battling investigators: demanding the return of her laptop, invoking a constitutional privilege (under the speech-and-debate clause) to impede agents from searching it, and threatening the Capitol Police with “consequences” if they don’t relent.
Only last week, according to Fox News, did she finally signal willingness to drop objections to a scan of the laptop by federal investigators.
Schultz's stridency in obstructing the investigation has been very suspicious.
As evidence mounted none of the Democrats for whom the Awans worked have expressed alarm.
We have heard suspicions that the investigation is a product of “Islamophobia.”
Samina Gilani, the Awan brothers’ stepmother, begs to differ.
Gilani complained to Virginia police that the Awans secretly bugged her home and then used the recordings to blackmail her.
She averred in court documents that she was pressured to surrender cash she had stored in Pakistan.
Imran claimed to be so powerful he could order her family members kidnapped.
Did the Awans send American secrets, and hundreds of thousands of American dollars, to Pakistan?
Democrats are in yet another actual scandal, with actual crimes, where people have actually been arrested by the FBI while actually trying to flee the country.
None of these actual crimes seem to be of any interest at all to traditional media outlets.
Imran Awan was arrested by the FBI after wiring $300,000 to Pakistan and misrepresenting the purpose.
He had previously wired money to the country.
He was frantically liquidating multiple real estate properties on the day he was arrested, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned.
Imran’s real estate properties provide money that could be sent directly to Pakistan when two upcoming home sales close.
Prosecutors have since filed paperwork saying they fear “the dissipation of the proceeds of the fraud and destruction of evidence in other locations.”
Imran was arrested July 24, 2017 — four months after the FBI says his wife Hina Alvi moved to Pakistan after learning the family was the subject of a criminal investigation into their work as IT administrators for House Democrats.
On the day of Imran’s arrest, the couple accepted a buyer for one house owned by Hina with an asking price of $618,000 (Hawkshead Dr.) and listed another property for sale at $200,000 (Pembrook Village), real estate records show.
On June 20, 2017, a third house his wife owned was “sold” to his brother-in-law for $360,000 (Sprayer St.).
In November 2016, a fourth home his wife owned was “sold” to his brother Jamal for $620,000 (Linnett Hill Dr.).
In both cases, the bank financed nearly all of the purchase.
Title companies can wire large sums of money to international bank accounts without arousing the suspicions of federal investigators.
In addition to the three houses sold or slated to be sold since June 20, 2017, Imran’s lawyer Chris Gowen told The New York Times that the $283,000 wire in January was preceded by other similar transfers to Pakistan.
“Gowen said the transfer represented the latest payment by his client for a piece of property he was buying in the country,” The NY Times reported.
Gowen would not say whether the proceeds of the $360,000 June 20 home sale were wired to Pakistan, nor where the income from the two upcoming home sales would go.
The value of the known homes that have been sold since November or are currently being sold is $1.8 million.
There is also the $283,000 January wire transfer from the Congressional bank, in addition to previous wires of unknown amounts that Imran’s lawyer acknowledged.
Since Imran’s lawyer said the January wire of $283,000 was the latest in a series of wires, or transfers.
The most intriguing question is why former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz decided to keep Imran on her taxpayer-funded payroll right up until his arrest, and whether that decision had anything to do with the whole DNC / Hillary email scandals that erupted last summer.
A preliminary hearing for Awan is scheduled for August 21, 2017.
Lt. Colonel Tony Schaffer alleged on Fox News (Tucker Carlson) that the Awan brothers may have aided Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in making voice modulated phone calls to the offices of attorneys pursuing a class action lawsuit against Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and the DNC.
If substantiated, the claims add to the growing controversy surrounding the recent arrest of Imran Awan on bank fraud charges.
Jared Beck is an attorney litigating the DNC Fraud Lawsuit.
Disobedient Media‘s coverage of the DNC fraud lawsuit discussed ominous phone calls received by the Becks’ offices.
The individual called the Becks using a voice modulator with a caller ID corresponding to the Aventura offices of Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
This came after a string of events surrounding the lawsuit which resulted in the Becks unsuccessfully seeking legal protection for themselves and others involved in the lawsuit.
The the former DNC chairwoman’s representatives denied the call had been made by Schultz or any associated party.
Such phone calls were one in a string of apparently threatening conduct by Schultz and her associates.
The former DNC chair was reported to have threatened the U.S. Capital chief of police with “consequences” in a heated exchange after he refused to surrender a laptop seized from Imran Awan.
Schaffer also discussed concerns regarding sensitive information that the Awans were privy to during their employment by the DNC.
Schaffer added that the sensitive information the Awans had access to were stored in a third database, which he said is now being called a “breach.”
Schaffer alleged that a “foreign intelligence service” may have been the recipient of the leaked information, referring specifically to the Muslim Brotherhood, which he speculated was what had prompted FBI involvement in the case beyond the initial wire fraud charges.
