Suspicion
If nothing else, he lied to the border police.
He insisted that he had only $10,000 as he was trying to drive into Canada last month.
Turns out he had considerably more than that - about $900,000 in gold coins and other currencies.
He also had an odd and damning array of other goodies in his possession. Read the full story for all the details.
Khaled Nawaya is in custody and he is innocent of any charges until proven otherwise.
He may be the Danny Kaye of border crossers - a goofy naive dupe.
Or he may be a terrorist.
Being a pilot and a certified flying instructor trying to drive into Canada with a cargo of oddities doesn't help.
The border guards were justified in stopping Nawaya and the Canadian government is justified in holding on to him until all can rest assured that he is just a nice guy with peculiar tastes in memorabilia.
4 comments:
So, he moved to the US when he was 17 and he is now 35. He's been living in the States for some time, has received a B.Sc. and a degree in management and yet he is too 'naive' to understand that he should not claim to be bringing only $10K into Canada when in fact he is bringing in $900K. OK, sure, I believe that. My 14 and 17 year old teenagers would know that that was probably not a wise idea.
"I guess the fact that he's Middle Eastern, he has a ring and a scarf was enough to send them over the deep end and it did," Mr. Rankin said.
To Rankin's comment, I say, really?
Yes, he deserves due process, but it reminds me of the Douglas Adams quote:
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.
Mo.
Just send him back where he came from originally - Syria. If anything, err on the side of caution. He crosses the border with gold coins worth nearly a million bucks. Sounds like he was trying to keep the transactions as untraceable as possible. What kind of nut job buys gold on the internet and then tries to smuggle it across the border? Why not wire the money and buy the gold once in Canada...oh yeah...that's right. That would be traceable to a source.
The Danny Kaye of border crossers? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Thank you for that, David!
Just FYI, the legal tender face value of a 1 oz. Canadian Gold Maple Leaf is $50, so he could have carried in 199 of them without the legal need of reporting them.
This may not have been news if he didn't lie to begin with...
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