Prestige Limousines boss Shahed Hussain helped to foil terror plot that saw four men jailed.
Who is Prestige Limousine owner Shahed Hussain?
The 62-year-old settled in Albany, New York state where he was given asylum along with his wife and two sons.
He fled his native Pakistan in 1994 after being accused of murder, arriving in the United States via Moscow and them Mexico, the Daily Mail reported.
Hussain began working as a government translator but in 2003 pleaded guilty to fraud after helping a person sitting their driving test cheat,
In return for avoiding jail he began working as an informant for the FBI
It was reported he helped secure the conviction of an Albany pizza shop owner and an imam for laundering and conspiring to aid a terrorist group though both claimed they tricked him.
He also played a part in a 2009 sting operation centring on a mosque in Newburgh
Posing as the wealthy representative of a Pakistani terrorist group, he taped of the defendants choosing targets and ranting against Jewish people.
In the 2010 trial it was revealed the four men had infiltrating the mosque and had planned to blow up two Jewish synagogues in the Bronx.
They had also plotted to shoot down planes flying out of an Air National Guard base.
Four men – ringleader James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen – were convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Defence lawyers said he entrapped an insignificant group of nobodies , in the process earning £73,000.
Albany-based lawyer Dana Salazar, who represented Mr Hussain in an unrelated civil case, confirmed to the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle on Monday that her client was the informant.
The FBI has declined to comment.
Who was the driver Scott Lisinicchia?
Lisinicchia was one of two drivers employed by Prestige Limousines.
The 48-year-old was busted twice on drugs charges during the past eight years, the New York Post reported.
In 2013, he was charged with with criminal possession of a controlled substance, unlawful possession of marijuana and an equipment violation when he was stopped while driving.
Previously he was charged with unlawful possession of marijuana in Saratoga Springs in 2010.
He is believed to live in Lake George, around an hour's drive from the town of Amsterdam, where the group he was carrying lived.
Who died in the New York crash?
All 18 people in the stretch Ford Excursion SUV limo died in one of the deadliest road accidents in US history.
The vehicle lost control on a steep hill and ploughed through a shop's car park where two bystanders were hit in upstate New York.
The dead included four sisters and their husbands who were in the rented vehicle on their way to her 30th birthday party.
The four sisters killed in the crash were identified by their aunt Barbara Douglas as Abigail Jackson, Mary Dyson, Allison King and Amy.
Source: Read Full Article