TAMPA — Sammy Mansour says the first time he found out his used car business was being linked to an international money laundering scheme for Hezbollah was through the media.
That was about 18 months ago.
“It ruined our lives,” says Mansour, sitting with his wife, Sylvia, last week in the lobby of the Marriott Waterside Hotel. “We didn’t have anything to do with Hezbollah.”
In December 2011, the federal government filed a civil complaint to seize more than $3 million from Mansour. The government said one of the companies he owned, Mansour Brothers Trading, received millions from people and financial organizations associated with Hezbollah as part of a “massive” international money laundering scheme that funded the Lebanon-based terrorist organization.
Mansour Brothers Trading was one of 30 car dealers around the country named in the complaint.
“We were duped,” says Mansour, who has been living in Tampa for three decades after he and his family escaped the bloody Lebanese civil war in 1982. “We had no idea. We have nothing to do with them and no relation to Hezbollah or any illegal actions.”
When the federal complaint was filed, Mansour’s lawyer, Tim Shusta, told The Tampa Tribune that the company had no knowledge of any Hezbollah connections to those who wired them the money and that the company would fight the government’s effort to seize the money.
About a year ago, Mansour Brothers Trading reached a settlement with the government. The settlement says the company and its officers did not know the money they received for their used cars came from a Lebanese money exchange house that U.S. officials say launders money for a Hezbollah-connected Lebanese drug kingpin, as well as a “self-proclaimed” Hezbollah member.
Mansour says the $3 million figure cited by the government is the amount of money his company received for selling cars over a five-year period between 2007 and 2011. But that did not represent profit, he says.
“We only made about $300 per car,” he says, adding that he usually purchased used vehicles from the Tampa used car auction, then would ship them overseas after receiving wire transfers.
Mansour did agree to forfeit funds from two Bay Cities Bank accounts, according to the settlement. One was closed and the other contained less than $1,000, Mansour said. Mansour also agreed not to sell vehicles to certain companies on a list compiled by federal agencies of those with suspected ties to jihadi groups.
“I wish I knew about that list before,” he says.
Though the government quietly settled the case last August, the stigma of being accused stuck with the Mansour family.
“We had families who no longer wanted to have their children play with our children,” says Sylvia Mansour.
“We lost business opportunities,” says Sammy Mansour.
Prosecutors would not comment specifically on the details of the agreement with the Mansour dealership but said of the 30 car dealers named in the complaint, settlements were reached with 29.
Mansour says he thought he eventually would be able to do an online search of his name and not see stories about the federal civil action against him. Once he realized those stories would live on, he says, he decided to speak publicly for the first time about the accusations against him and their effects on his family.
“When the stories came out, our kids would come home crying from school,” he says. “They destroyed my name and tell me I won’t get an apology and I can’t sue.”