I did not know if Zuhair Karam was violent, but I telephoned him because I thought his biography was interesting. For example, it was interesting that soon after making a home in Illinois, Zuhair Karam obtained finance to publish a semi-famous work of jihadi propaganda, and soon thereafter, became (without any relevant experience) a proprietary day trader of equities and derivatives at a small, unregistered brokerage in Chicago called Tuco Trading.
Most of the other people who operated through Tuco Trading also had interesting biographies. Among them (just to name a few) were a Russian Mafia figure who is knowledgeable about a brutal gangland-style murder in New Jersey; the top lieutenants of a Russian Mafia kingpin and oligarch who have been accused by U.S. officials of having ties to the Russian government’s intelligence apparatus; and an Iranian fellow whose family has high-level ties to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the terrorist-sponsoring Revolutionary Guard in Tehran.
Meanwhile, Zuhair’s little brokerage, Tuco Trading, maintained partnerships with several other brokerages, all of which had close business relationships with people of similarly colorful backgrounds. Among them were multiple associates of La Cosa Nostra; numerous traders with ties to the Russian Mafia; and a jihadi who not only was Al Qaeda’s most important financier, but also operated a secret bomb factory in a Chicago warehouse district before the U.S. government named him a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist”.
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