Ice Cream Fortunes

I puzzled at "Lodi, California Mysteries" over the large amounts of money available to Umer Hayat, an ice cream truck vendor in Lodi, California connected to terrorism – his carrying $28,093 in cash through an airport and owning a two-house compound appraised for $390,000 with no outstanding debt.

Now, on the other coast, a Yemeni immigrant, Abad Elfgeeh, 50, has just been found guilty of illegally funneling $21.9 million overseas from his Carnival French Ice Cream in Park Slope, Brooklyn. He faces up to 15 years in prison. This huge amount of money is partly explained by Mohammed Ali Hassan Al-Moayad, the Yemeni imam who funded Al-Qaeda and Hamas, having used Elfgeeh's business to move money around. Still, what is it about ice cream and Islamists? (September 21, 2005) Feb. 3, 2006 update: Elfgeeh was sentenced to fifteen and a half years in prison.

Oct. 9, 2005 update: A reader points out another ice cream connection – The 1915 Picnic Train Tragedy in Silverton, Australia. Talk about unexpected. The short version is that "Gool Mahomed, a young Afghan Afridi ice-cream vendor" joined with a 60-year-old former camel-driver to stage a short-lived rebellion in the mining town, killing three and themselves both dying.

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