On Tuesday, an IT staffer who worked for House Democrats, including former DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), was arrested at Dulles International Airport for a bank fraud charge.
According to Fox News, 37-year-old Imran Awan was obtained by the FBI, U.S. Capitol Police, and Customs and Border Protection as he attempted to leave the country to Pakistan. After he pleaded not guilty during his arraignment in federal court in Washington, D.C., he was released but is forced to wear a GPS monitor and follow a curfew.
In a report by The Daily Caller, Awan transferred $283,000 to two individuals in Pakistan from the Longworth House Office Building. His wife had already fled to Pakistan, but while police did not prevent her from boarding her plane, she reportedly had $12,000 in cash.
Awan was under criminal investigation for allegedly double-billing the House for numerous equipment like computers, iPads, and routers. His two brothers and their wives also worked as IT staffers for House Democrats for over a decade, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And while all of them were let go months ago, Awan was kept on by the Florida congresswoman. He wasn’t fired until recently.
“Mr. Awan previously served as a part-time employee but his services have been terminated,” a spokesman for Wasserman Schultz said in a statement. “No charges, evidence or findings from the investigation have been formally shared with our office, so we cannot comment on them.”
The group of IT staffers were also being suspected by authorities of putting sensitive House information on the “cloud” and possibly exposing it to others.
Awan and his family are of Pakistani descent, and according to Democrat sources, their ethnicity “is a factor in the attention they’re receiving.”
For months, Wasserman Schultz refused to allow U.S. Capitol Police to have access to her laptop as part of the investigation. She is now in negotiations to sharing her device with the authorities.
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