Inside ICE: Volume 3, Issue 1

Man Pleads Guilty To Using Embassy Ties To Smuggle Aliens

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—An Egyptian national pled guilty January 10 to using his position as a driver at the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, D.C. to secure fraudulent Saudi diplomatic visas to help aliens enter the United States illegally.

Mohamed Abdel Wahab Yakoub, a.k.a. Mohamed Wardi, a 61-year-old native of Egypt and a resident of Maryland, was arrested by ICE agents working with the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Washington, D.C. at Dulles International Airport on Feb. 14, 2005, upon his arrival on a flight from Cairo, Egypt.

Yakoub, who was fired by the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in late 2002, pled guilty to one count of smuggling aliens into the United States. JTTF agents in Washington had been investigating Yakoub and his alleged human smuggling scheme for more than a year before his arrest.

Yakoub admitted he helped Egyptian and Filipino aliens get fraudulent Saudi diplomatic visas to the United States. Yakoub prepared documents on Saudi Embassy letterhead falsely stating that a Saudi diplomat was requesting a visa for Egyptians and Filipinos to work for the Saudi diplomat in the United States. These fraudulent letters, complete with Saudi government stamps, were then sent to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo or to the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Philippines, to help the aliens receive U.S. visas for entry into this country.

Yakoub admitted that he charged each alien between $5,000 and $7,000 for securing the false Saudi diplomatic visas. At this time, JTTF has no information indicating that any of those illegal aliens who entered the United States via this alleged smuggling scheme had any terrorist ties.

“Anytime you have an individual exploiting his post at an embassy in the United States to smuggle people into this country illegally, it raises serious homeland security concerns,” said Thomas Madigan, acting special agent-in-charge for ICE in Washington, D.C. “Thankfully, we have closed down this human smuggling pipeline.”

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