Schemes include skimming the profits of drug sales, stealing and reselling baby formula, illegally redeeming huge quantities of grocery coupons, collecting fraudulent welfare payments, swiping credit card numbers and selling unlicensed T-shirts. Investigators are searching for similarities in the convenience stores' financial practices and how they transfer money to determine whether their activities are centrally directed, reports the Post.
Lindsay Hutter, NACS senior vice president of communications and public relations responded to the report by saying, "As the first anniversary of 9/11 approaches, this behavior could have the very negative impact of increasing ethnic hostility against the many ethnically diverse, yet patriotic Americans that work in our industry." As a result, NACS will update its Preventing Ethnic Hostility Guide. The guide was released last September following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington to help member companies protect ethnic employees from racial slurs and assaults.
Moderator Comment: What is your reaction to reported investigations into terrorism links within the convenience store industry?
To our knowledge, there have not been any Muslim operators of convenience stores or any of their suppliers, regardless of nationality, charged with supplying aid to a terrorist organization.
We understand the common sense aspect of investigating groups seen as most likely to be engaged in this activity. We are troubled, however, by what appears to be a rush to judgement. Even the quoted response from NACS seems to assume that there are guilty parties somewhere within the convenience store industry.
Having been raised on stories from the North of Ireland where individuals were assumed to be enemies of the state simply because they were Catholic, we can only hope that the same does not happen here. Let innocence or guilt be decided in the courts, not in the media or the forum of public opinion. [George Anderson - Moderator]