A pair of phony Homeland Security agents who allegedly infiltrated the highest levels of federal law enforcement and plied agents with lavish gifts were somehow tipped off to their arrest last week, allowing them to stash guns and other items, prosecutors revealed in a new filing on Sunday.
Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 36, were arrested last week when cops swarmed the upscale Crossing Apartments in Washington, D.C.’s Navy Yard neighborhood, bringing what appears to be an extraordinary two-year-long ruse to an end.
The pair were charged with false impersonation of a federal officer for allegedly running an elaborate scheme that fooled at least one Homeland Security official and four Secret Service agents working on security details for President Joe Biden, first lady Jill Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris. The duo allegedly flashed official-looking IDs, carried Glocks, drove black SUVs with flashing lights, and became so friendly with some agents that they put the agents up for free in penthouses at the Crossings and gifted them iPhones, rifles, and drones.
ADVERTISEMENT
Federal prosecutor Matthew Graves said in the Sunday filing that investigators are still uncovering disturbing new information following last week’s arrests.
“Each hour since their arrest, the Government learns more—and scarier—information about how Taherzadeh and Ali abused their fake authority,” he said as he argued both men should be detained before trial.
For example, Graves said, investigators sifting through the multiple apartments Taherzadeh and Ali occupied at the Crossings have found illegal high-capacity magazines for Taherzadeh’s Sig Sauer 229 and Ali’s Glock 19. That’s in addition to the long list of items already seized including guns, ammo, body armor, surveillance gear, forced entry tools like a sledgehammer and mini-door ram, fake training certificates, fake badges, gas masks, tactical gear, hard drivers, servers, a drone, training manuals from the Department of Homeland Security and Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and a binder with a list of every resident at the Crossings, a building popular with law enforcement families.
Items allegedly seized from Taherzadeh’s and Ali’s apartments.
DOJGraves said more victims have come forward since last week too, including a Naval Intelligence Officer to whom Taherzadeh allegedly claimed to be a Homeland Security Investigations agent. “The Intelligence Officer was so alarmed and concerned about Taherzadeh’s attempt to gather information that he reported the contact to the Naval Criminal Investigative Services,” the filing says.
More troubling, the pair appear to have been tipped off to the FBI’s impending raid and arrest, and tried to ditch some potentially incriminating items via a Secret Service agent assigned to protect the White House, prosecutors said.
Officers found shipping materials and UPS labels in one of their penthouses, and in early April, as the FBI surveilled the pair, the Secret Service agent received a package in the mail from the pair, prosecutors said. The package contained three empty cases for Sig Sauer and Glock firearms that have not been found, a high-capacity magazine, and four expensive cigars.
A package sent to a Secret Service agent allegedly contained ammo and cigars.
DOJ“This is consistent with the prior pattern and practice of providing federal law enforcement agents with gifts and items of value, and suggests that Taherzadeh and/or Ali shipped the package to the USSS Uniformed Division Officer in an attempt to corruptly enlist him in secreting evidence,” the filing said.
Prosecutors said in a Thursday arraignment hearing that Ali had boasted of his ties to Pakistani intelligence services to at least two witnesses, and had visas in his passport for Iran and Pakistan, but the FBI has not confirmed any ties to overseas spy agencies.
Such high-level ties would come as a surprise to two former friends and business associates of Taherzadeh, who described him to The Daily Beast on Friday as nothing more than a failed entrepreneur and serial grifter who left a trail of bounced checks and empty promises in Missouri a decade ago.
