Sept. 11 Hijackers Opened Bank Accounts

By
<a href="http://abcnews.com/sections/wnt/WorldNewsTonight/thomas_pierre_bio.html">Pierre Thomas</a>
January 7, 2006, 11:43 AM ET
2 min read

W A S H I N G T O N, July 10, 2002 -- There is new evidence the Sept. 11 hijackers established themselves in the United States and prepared for their attack by opening 35 bank accounts, some by using fake Social Security numbers, according to FBI officials. The bank officials never checked them.

On July 19, 2000, hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi received $9,985 from the United Arab Emirates, sources said. The money was wired to a Florida Sun Trust Bank account. One month later, Atta and Al-Shehhi received $69,000 from the same country.

The overseas funding was part of the roughly $500,000 needed to finance the September attacks. The hijackers took full advantage of an easily accessible U.S. banking system.

"We've made it easy for people to become Americans: to get driver's licenses, to get into the United States," said Jonathan Winer, a former State Department official and expert on money laundering. "Sept. 11 was one of the prices we paid for that openness."

Bank Didn't Verify

To place hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. bank accounts, including at Sun Trust, all the hijackers had to do was show a valid passport and another form of identification, such as a driver's license.

But some of the hijackers opened accounts using made up Social Security numbers that were never verified by the banks.

In a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing Tuesday, FBI special agent Dennis Lormel, the top financial investigator, explained, "They made up numbers for account purposes when they were filling out bank applications."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., pressed him on it, asking if they just made up the numbers and it worked. Lormel said, "Yes."

Money laundering experts say some banks are so eager for business that they don't do all the necessary checks.

"They're supposed to go through a verification procedure," said Winer. "One of the most important things to check is a Social Security number."

If the Social Security numbers were proven to be bogus, then banks and law enforcement officials might have started asking questions.