Biography
Mohammed Mosharref Hossain was the Bangladeshi-American owner of an Albany, New York pizzeria and a founder of the Masjid As-Salam mosque in Albany. He was arrested on August 6, 2004 in an FBI sting operation in which informant Shahed Hussein, posing as an arms dealer, offered him a $50,000 cash loan to be repaid in $45,000 of pizza-shop business checks, with the loaned money allegedly proceeds from the sale of a Chinese surface-to-air missile to Jaish-e-Mohammed for use against the Pakistani Ambassador in New York. Hossain pulled imam Yassin Aref into the transaction solely as a religious witness.
He was convicted in October 2006 and sentenced in March 2007 to 15 years in federal prison. He was granted compassionate release in June 2020 because of advanced medical risk during the COVID-19 pandemic.
