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| Virginia Mom Accused of ISIS Support |
| 2014-11-21 |
| [USNews] A woman claiming to have connections to Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... group recruiters was caught in an FBI sting. A Virginia woman has been tossed in the calaboose Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! and charged with lying to federal officials after offering to put an undercover FBI agent in touch with an alleged Islamic State group recruiting network. Heather Elizabeth Coffman, 29, of Henrico County, Virginia, appeared in U.S. District Court in Richmond Monday and is awaiting a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, according to The News Agency that Dare Not be Named. Federal officials reportedly set up a sting operation after Coffmanâs pro-Islamic State group social media activity drew their attention. She is charged with making a materially false statement to a federal official regarding a terrorism investigation. She is also âsuspected of conspiring and attempting to provide material supportâ to the Islamic State group, according to charging documents cited by ABC News. Coffman first drew the FBIâs attention through pro-Islamic State group social media activity, according to CNN. She reportedly operated a number of Facebook accounts under the names âHeather Coffman,â âHeather Obeida Laâahadâ and âUbeida Ametova,â among others. Her accounts reportedly ranged in their Death Eater support, but included pictures of armed bad boys, the Islamic State groupâs iconic black flag and correspondence sympathetic to the bad boy group targeted in Iraq and Syria by the U.S. military and a host of international allies. An undercover FBI official began communicating with Coffman in July, claiming to be a fellow Islamic State group sympathizer, according to The Washington Post. Coffman told the agent she had connections with Islamic State group controllers in Turkey and reportedly offered to contact such a person on behalf of the undercover agent and an associate. The agent told her that his associate was interested in traveling to Syria to fight with the bad boy group. Coffman told the agent she had previously tried to set recruiters up with a man she claimed to be her husband, according to CNN. "I set him up with the brothers, who gave him a contact name and number in Turkey to get him across the border when it was time for training," Coffman told the undercover agent, according to court documents. "But my account was disabled, so I couldn't follow through with that. But I think he was just joking us about going." The legitimacy of Coffman's connections is uncertain. Her defense attorney, Mark Henry Schmidt, said Coffman was born in the U.S., lives with her parents, has a 7-year-old child and is unlikely to have developed a recruiting network. He said he has no knowledge of her leaving the country or even Virginia, according to the AP. [ALSO: The Supreme Court to Tackle Subsidy Portion of Obamacare ... aka the Affordable Care Act, an ineptly designed and worse executed piece of legislation designed to bring 17 percent of the U.S. economy under the direct control of the government. The previous iteration, known as Hillarycare, was laughed out of Washington. This stinker was passed on a party-line vote without being read... ] "As far as I know, she hasn't traveled anywhere. Her connections with the outside world would be on the Internet," Schmidt said, according to the Post. "I imagine you can get into trouble on the Internet, but I imagine you can also think a lot more's going on than really is. If nothing else, this is certainly a cautionary tale about the Internet." The FBI also obtained a search warrant for at least one of Coffman's Facebook accounts on Aug. 4, according to CNN. The subsequent search revealed exchanges with a man authorities believe was Coffman's purported husband. She reportedly told him at one point to stop posting pro-Islamic State group updates because the "[National Security Agency] has already seen it," according to CNN and the Post. As of Nov. 7, Coffman was still corresponding with the undercover agent and allegedly attempting to arrange travel. Two FBI agents met with Coffman at her place of employment on Nov. 13 to discuss her meetings with the undercover agent, according to CNN. It was not immediately clear where Coffman works, according to the Post. When asked if she and the undercover agent had discussed the Islamic State group or al-Qaeda, Coffman claimed, "We don't talk about things like that." She was then warned that lying to a federal agent is a crime, but said she was telling the truth. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |