SAN ANGELO, TX—The owner of American Halal Meat Processors, Inc., in San Angelo, Texas, Mohammed Fayyaz Hayat, 47, pled guilty on Friday to four counts of wire fraud and aiding and abetting and two counts of false statements to a bank and aiding and abetting, announced U.S. Attorney Richard B. Roper of the Northern District of Texas.  A sentencing date has not been set.  Hayat is currently in custody. The maximum statutory penalty for each count is 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine per count.

In June 1999, Hayat and his wife, Roohi Fayyaz, incorporated American Halal Meat Processors, Inc., in Texas, to operate a halal slaughtering business. Halal butchering is the Islamic ritual in which an animal’s throat is cut to allow removal of all blood. Hayat purchased a closed meat processing plant located on N. Bell Street in San Angelo, paying $50,000 at closing and signing two promissory notes, totaling $625,000 to the seller. Hayat and his wife also owned an auto repair garage business in St. Paul, Minnesota, and in the late 1990s, lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Beginning in April 2002 and continuing until February 2007, Hayat devised and intended to devise a scheme and artifice to defraud and obtain money and property by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations and promises to convince three potential lenders in Minnesota to provide financing and lines of credit to him to supposedly expand his automotive repair business in Minnesota and make improvements to the Minnesota property. He then, however, used these proceeds to fund renovations at his property in Texas. He also used materially false and fraudulent representations and documents to convince two additional lenders that he had sufficient collateral and income to repay the financing he was seeking when, as he well knew, he didn’t have sufficient collateral or income to repay the financing. He was charged with wire fraud for the wiring of the money from the banks in Minnesota and then for making false statements to the banks for the loans he received in Texas.

U.S. Attorney Roper praised the investigative efforts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Cruce-Roberts of the Lubbock, Texas, U.S. Attorney’s Office is prosecuting the case.

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