Pirouz Sedaghaty, known in the United States as Pete Seda, had fled to Iran after he was charged a few years ago. But he returned voluntarily to undergo trial.
US District Judge Michael Hogan last Tuesday sentenced the 53-year-old Seda to 33 months in prison for helping smuggle $150,000 to Saudi Arabia through his now-defunct Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation charity in 2000 and then lying about it on tax forms to cover up the crime.
Hogan declined to add about five more years to the sentence after ruling that prosecutors failed to prove the money actually made it to Islamic extremists in Chechnya fighting against Russia.
“There’s no doubt the Chechen mujahedeen was involved with terrorism, but there hasn’t been a link to this defendant,” Judge Hogan said.
Seda was never accused of any links to the Iranian government, which actually supports Russia in its efforts to suppress the Muslims of Chechnya.
Hogan allowed Seda two months more freedom while wearing a GPS tracking device before he must report to federal prison to serve his sentence.
Prosecutors had sought immediate incarceration of Seda, whom they considered a flight risk after he spent nearly three years as an international fugitive before returning voluntarily in 2007 to fight the charges against him.
“So far, you’ve done what you have told me you would do,” Hogan told Seda. “But don’t do something to break that confidence.”
Outside of court, a smiling Seda hugged supporters but declined comment at the request of his defense attorneys “because I have a big mouth.”
Lead defense attorney Steven Wax said outside of court that his team will appeal Seda’s 2010 conviction on money-laundering and tax-fraud charges as well as Tuesday’s sentencing.
Wax said he also will ask the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals to grant Seda his freedom until that appeal is settled, which likely will last longer than the full prison term ordered by Hogan.
Wax said not sentencing Seda as a supporter of terrorism was “significant” in keeping Seda’s sentence to less than three years, as well as helping put him in a “far better position” to remain free pending appeal.
Seda has never been labeled by the US government as a supporter of terrorism. However, his Al-Haramain chapter, its parent organization and a co-defendant in the case — a Saudi national named Soliman Al-Buthe — have all been labeled supporters of terrorism.
Al-Buthe, who lives in Saudi Arabia, which has no extradition treaty with the United States, remains wanted for his role in the money-laundering case.
Al-Buthe and Seda took a $150,000 donation from an Egyptian doctor and turned it into a $12,500 cashier’s check and the rest in traveler’s cheques in June 2000. Al-Buthe then carried that money back to Saudi Arabia without declaring it, in violation of federal law.
The checks were cashed in Saudi Arabia, but the money trail evaporated.
Defense attorneys said the money was meant for charitable work.
Seda then filed a false tax return to hide the crime, prosecutors said.
In sentencing Seda, Hogan deemed the acts as “complex and intricate conduct” and said Seda committed obstruction of justice and perjury. Those findings helped push Seda’s prison term higher than if he’d been sentenced as a run-of-the-mill tax cheat.
Hogan also ordered Seda to pay the Internal Revenue Service nearly $81,000 for taxes owed had the return been filed properly. Seda had reported on Al-Haramain’s tax filing that the $150,000 had been used to buy a building in Missouri, a legitimate charitable expense the exempted the funds from taxation.
