Kennewick man enters plea for his role in a staged accident scheme, other charges
By Dan Thesman on Wednesday, October 12th, 2022 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories
SPOKANE – Vanessa R. Waldref, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington, announced this week that Ali Abed Yaser, 52, of Kennewick pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, making false statements to the FBI, conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, and two counts of mail fraud.
Yaser is scheduled to be sentenced on January 16, 2023 in Richland.
According to court documents, in February 2019, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FB”) opened an official investigation into allegations that several individuals were involved in a scheme to defraud insurance companies by staging automobile accidents, and filing false and fraudulent claims with insurance companies, in violation of federal criminal laws. As part of the investigation, the FBI used a confidential human source (CHS) who covertly recorded conversations with individuals suspected of being involved in the staged accident scheme. A federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Washington later convened to further investigate Yaser and his co-defendants’ scheme.
During the investigation, the FBI discovered that on May 28, 2019, Yaser staged an automobile accident on Highway 12 in Benton County, Washington. The staged accident involved a Hyundai Sonata, driven by another individual being purposely driven into a Lexus IS driven by Yaser. At the time, a credit union had a lien of approximately $30,018.78 on the Lexus. Yaser subsequently filed fraudulent insurance claims representing that he was involved in an accident and suffered bodily injury and wage loss. Yaser was never injured because he was not even in the vehicle at impact. An insurance company paid Yaser and others approximately $126,990.
In May 2020, the FBI executed warrants to search several residences in Washington and California for evidence of federal crimes. Afterward, Yaser held a meeting at his residence because he suspected someone was providing information to the FBI and warned the CHS to be careful of that person.
In August 2020, Yaser told the CHS that he learned that the individual Yaser suspected was an FBI informant recently visited the CHS. Yaser admonished the CHS for not calling him when the suspected informant visited the CHS. Yaser told the CHS that he would have come over to his residence, closed the garage door, shut off the security system cameras, and killed the individual he suspected was the FBI informant. Yaser told the CHS “they would not have recognized his face from his foot.”
Yaser further encouraged the CHS to call the person Yaser thought was the FBI informant and to convince the person to meet with Yaser at his residence. Yaser directed the the CHS to send an audio-recording of a conversation between the CHS and the suspected informant. Yasir told the CHS, “the recording, you know, will not go to the government.” A few days later, Yaser met with the CHS and discussed plans to file a false, fictitious, and fraudulent complaint against the FBI case agent and the suspected FBI informant. Yaser also sought to persuade others to support this plan to make false allegations against the FBI case agent and the suspected informant. Specifically, Yaser wanted an audio recording of the suspected informant that Yaser could exploit and use to discredit the FBI agent in the case against Yaser.
In late August 2020, Yaser discussed fabricating a story to communicate to the local police and the FBI in furtherance of the scheme to discredit the FBI case agent and the individual Yaser suspected was an FBI informant and to make them unavailable as witnesses. Yaser’s ultimate goal was to have the FBI agent removed from the case. Yaser stated in sum and substance, “We will file a complaint with the police and the police will forward it to them [FBI]” and “[t]he police will turn it upside down on them, it won’t take half an hour and it would reach them.”
