Large Quantity of Cellphones Bought By “Immigrants” at Rural Missouri Walmart Sets Of

Large Quantity of Cellphones Bought By “Immigrants” at Rural Missouri Walmart Sets Off Alarms

Jim Hoft
Dec 9th, 2015 1:05 pm

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Two “foreign speaking” men set off alarms after they entered the local Walmart store in Lebanon, Missouri and purchased 60 cellphones. The purchase was made around 4 AM last Saturday morning. Police were called but released the men saying they didn’t have a legal reason to detain them.

KY3 reported:

A large number of cellphones bought in the early morning hours set off concern in Lebanon.
Police say just before 4am Saturday morning, two men purchased about 60 phones from the Walmart store.
Police were called, but after talking with them police say they didn’t have a legal reason to detain them.
But they did call the FBI.

“I’m not going to say just because they’re a different religion or because they’re Muslim. But these people were, they were foreign-speaking. You need to take notice, you need to let us know about it because it doesn’t hurt to check on it. You’re not being racist or anything like that. You’re just protecting yourself,” said Laclede County Sheriff Wayne Merritt.

After the San Bernardino shooting, several media outlets reported some neighbors noticed suspicious activity at the home of shooters Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik.
No reports were made, however, out of fear of being accused of racial profiling.

Police say cellphones can be potential tools in the hands of terrorists.

Besides their use in communication, they can also be used as detonators for bombs.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/12/large-quantity-of-cellphones-bought-by-immigrants-at-rural-missouri-walmart-sets-off-alarms/

At least 4 reported incidents of suspicious phone purchases across Missouri

Taylor Petras, Reporter, taylor.petras@kmiz.com

FBI investigating suspicious purchase at Columbia Walmart

COLUMBIA, Mo. -Authorities in at least four Missouri cities have gotten reports of suspicious phone purchases at Wal-Mart stores.

ABC 17 News confirmed Thursday someone tried to buy a suspicious number of phones at Wal-Mart East in Jefferson City over the weekend. The latest report is in addition to three other reports of similar incidents in Columbia, Macon and Lebanon. Authorities in all four cities said they had contacted FBI agents. However, The FBI only confirmed it is investigating three of those reports.

On Thursday, a television station in Cape Girardeau reported that the FBI was investigating more suspicious phone purchases in Cape Girardeau and Jackson. ABC 17 News reached out to the police departments in both cities to confirm these reports and has not heard back.

ABC 17 News reported on Wednesday that 100 prepaid cell phones were purchased at two Missouri Walmarts over the weekend, and employees reported the incidents to authorities.

The Columbia Police Department was notified on Monday of a suspicious purchase at the Walmart on Conley Road. According to the police report, several men bought dozens of phones around 9:30 Friday night.

ABC 17 New talked to a witness who didn't want to be identified said the men paid with cash.

"Right then and there I knew there was not something adding up about this. It's not right, it doesn't make any sense," he said. "Who's going to order 50 phones for Christmas? Who does that?"

"I think on the surface that is suspicious," said Paul Fennewald, the former Missouri Homeland Security Coordinator. "If I had seen the same thing, I probably would have called somebody also."

A similar situation also happened hours later at a Walmart in Lebanon, Mo. Police said two men bought about 60 phones. They were taken into custody, but later released because police said they had no legal reason to detain them.

Macon police and the sheriff's department also said they are investigating a "recent suspicious purchase of multiple cell phones" at their local Wal-Mart.

Fennewald said the prepaid phones are used as a way for criminals to communicate without law enforcement tracking them. He said in many past terrorist attacks cell phones have been used to trigger an explosive device.

The man who saw the phones being purchased in Columbia said he instantly thought the men were up to no good.

"That's the first thing that ran through my mind that something bad could happen," he said. "You know, they could be using these phones for terrorist acts."

Fennewald said the Walmart employees did the right thing by reporting the odd purchase to police. He said everybody should do the same when they see something suspicious.

"If we're going to prevent that next terrorist attack, especially the next terrorist attack in Columbia, Missouri, or Boone County, it's not going to be the FBI, it's not going to be law enforcement, it's going to be the viewers of this broadcast that are probably going to be the key to preventing."

ABC 17 News reached out to Walmart Corporate for comment on the incidents in Missouri.

"Because this is an ongoing investigation, I’d refer you to law enforcement for any information for your story," Betsy Harden, a Walmart spokeswoman, said in an email.
http://www.abc17news.com/news/fbi-in...lmart/36877514

http://www.alipac.us/f19/missouri-do...7/#post1483520

Apple's iPhone, the New International Currency

By Vernon Silver February 06, 2014

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Photograph by Andrew Burton/Getty Images

I’ve been paying my bills with iPhones. Not with apps or on bank sites—I’ve been using the Apple (AAPL) hardware as currency.

It started by accident in December, during a business trip to New York. I live in Rome, where domestic work comes cheap and technology is expensive. An unlocked, gold, 32-gigabyte iPhone 5s that costs about $815 with tax in the U.S. goes for €839 (about $1,130) in Italy, roughly a month’s wages for workers who do laundry, pick up kids from school, or provide care for the elderly. When one worker heard I was visiting the States, she asked me to pick her up an iPhone in lieu of the equivalent cash for work she’d done. Lining up inside the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, I was surrounded by shoppers speaking languages from around the world. The salesman looked stunned when I said I wanted an unlocked iPhone. Just one?

A new shipment of unlocked 5s phones had just come in, he said, adding that the gold model I asked for was the most popular in Europe and the easiest to resell. To my right, a man with a credit card from a Saudi bank was trying to buy his third and fourth phones of the day.

“Make it two,” I said. There was one more step: The salesman grabbed a landline from behind the counter to connect me with my bank’s antifraud department.

Purchases from this store, he said, are red flags.

VIDEO: How Many People Visit Apple Stores Per Quarter?

Do the math, and that’s no surprise. Exiting the store with my plastic Apple shopping bag secured by a rope drawstring, I no longer thought of the phones inside as appliances. They were more like gold bars.

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Transnational workers rich and poor have long dealt in an ever-evolving system of arbitrage for luxury goods carrying significant price differences around the world. A few years ago, it was Louis Vuitton (MC:FP) and Gucci (KER:FP) handbags, bought in Paris by Asians who paid for trips home by selling the purses at a markup. In the early 1990s, Levi’s jeans served a similar function for Americans in Eastern Europe. Today, it’s the iPhone, especially that gold 5s.

Kyle Wiens, chief executive officer of the iPhone spare-parts distributor IFixit, was scuba diving during a break from a November conference in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, when the dive leader offered free boat trips if Wiens ever returned to Mexico with iPhones to sell at the U.S. price.

(The phone costs about 16 percent more in Mexico than in the U.S.) Wiens says he’s seeing more and more widespread iPhone arbitrage. When he goes to China to meet suppliers, he brings a couple iPhones and iPads to sell at cost, as a gesture of goodwill.

STORY: What Do Chinese Millionaires Like? Apple, Hermès, and Australia

Alexander Peterc, an analyst with Exane BNP Paribas whose office sits above the Apple Store on London’s Regent Street, says that for more than a month after the 5s came out last year, people from countries where it wasn’t yet available lined up every day. “They can probably pay their plane ticket by buying two phones and selling them in India,” says Peterc.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has hinted that the cross-border movement of iPhones is important to his bottom line. In July, when Apple reported revenue in Greater China had dropped 14 percent in the previous quarter, to $4.6 billion, he blamed a downturn in purchases in Hong Kong, where tourists and resellers are major customers. Apple spokeswoman Teresa Brewer declined to comment.

$707.41

Average price in the U.S. of a gold iPhone 5S with 16GB of memory, according to Mobile Unlocked

According to a list of iPhone prices in 48 countries compiled by Stanmere (U.K.)-based Mobile Unlocked, the cheapest 5s with 16GB of memory can be purchased for about $700 in the U.S. The most expensive country in which to purchase the same phone is Brazil, at $1,200. At a little less than $1,000, Italy ranked seventh-most expensive, tied with Malta.

STORY: The Havana Genius Bar

Within a couple days of my return, I exchanged both phones for domestic work, valuing them at the $815 I’d paid. The second phone’s recipient sold hers for its local value ($1,130) to an acquaintance, she said, with payments to be made over time. She told me the new owner sold the phone at an additional markup on an installment plan that will cost the final buyer about $1,350.

On a trip to Los Angeles a few weeks after my Fifth Avenue purchases, I found myself in front of another Apple Store. Walking in felt like a visit to an ATM. I asked the salesperson for an unlocked iPhone 5s. The response: Just one?

I didn’t have a buyer lined up, so I did buy only one. Still, when I got back to Italy, I exchanged it within a week, for €600 worth of household work from someone whose phone had been stolen on the subway. She’d bought the stolen one on layaway for €1,000, and is still paying it off.

STORY: Nothing Keeps Apple From Making an Android Phone Except Common Sense

I was relieved to make the deal: An iPhone’s value lasts only until the next product launch. For now, the 5s is holding steady, even against that other new currency—Bitcoin.

The bottom line: U.S. Apple stores mean free money to international travelers, whose neighbors have to pay far more at home.

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles...ther-countries

I am just amazed at how fast these poor refugees? found the cash to pay for all those phones. The "phones are just international currency, nothing to see here move on" explanation doesn't pass muster with me.

From the ALIPAC archives.
They were buying and reselling cell phones back in 06.

http://www.alipac.us/f12/cell-phone-...charges-34695/

8/16/2006

But the Michigan and Ohio cases may unravel, raising questions about local power.


Lawyers and supporters of the men — all of Middle Eastern descent — said they believed that the men were arrested because of their ethnicity and that they were only looking to make some money by buying the phones and reselling them. They said the arrests reflected a worrisome trend . . .

The two men acknowledged buying about 600 phones in recent months as part of a moneymaking scheme...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

From the ALIPAC archives.
They were buying and reselling cell phones back in 06.

http://www.alipac.us/f12/cell-phone-...charges-34695/

8/16/2006

But the Michigan and Ohio cases may unravel, raising questions about local power.


Lawyers and supporters of the men — all of Middle Eastern descent — said they believed that the men were arrested because of their ethnicity and that they were only looking to make some money by buying the phones and reselling them. They said the arrests reflected a worrisome trend . . .

The two men acknowledged buying about 600 phones in recent months as part of a moneymaking scheme...

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They're reselling them to Al Qaeda and ISIS.