Big Dogs Weblog

Euphoric Reality Hacked

by Big Dog on Jan 23, 2007 at 22:20 Uncategorized

I wrote a piece this past week about a store that responded to a soldier’s requests about sleeping mats with a diatribe on the war. A lot of bloggers have been on this and the folks at Euphoric Reality have been in the lead (two days ahead of Hot Air). The store belongs to a Pakistani and there are many fishy things to look at. The look see we have had at him and the attention must have struck a raw nerve because someone hacked their site and removed all of the information relating only to the post about the Pakistani’s store. We must be on to something! Anyway, I am cross posting the entire item here so that it will be held, and backed up, in more than one place.
*************************************************************************************************
Discount-Mats.com

One of our soldiers emailed a retailer in West Allis, Wisconsin, inquiring whether they could ship floor mats to an APO address. The NCO wanted to buy better gear for his troops to sleep on. You won’t believe the company’s response*. (Their email address is included below, if you’d like to let the company know what you think of their business.):

From: SGT Jason Hess
Sent: Tue Jan 16 3:25

Do you ship to APO address? I’m in the 1st Cavalry Division stationed in Iraq and we are trying to order some mats but we are looking for who ships to APO first.

*****************************************************

From: contact@discount-mats.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 9:44 PM
Subject: Re: Feedback: from discount-mats.com

SGT Hess,
We do not ship to APO addresses, and even if we did, we would NEVER ship to Iraq. If you were sensible, you and your troops would pull out of Iraq.

Bargain Suppliers
Discount-Mats.com

Apparently, Discount-Mats prides itself on its customer service: “Outstanding Service – As a customer, you’re part of our family. You can expect friendly, courteous, responsive service before and after the sale.” Unless you’re an American servicemember, that is.

This person of indeterminate ethnic origin needs to be educated – it’s bad business to insult our troops, doncha know?

contact@discount-mats.com

414-736-8394

fax: 414-543-9634

Here is their mailing address:

Bargain Suppliers
3259 S.106th Street
West Allis, WI 53227

* Verified as true by Snopes. (Two updates to Snopes below.)

The soldier, SGT Jason Hess, has been inundated with fine Americans offering more gear than he knows what to do with! He has plenty of suppliers now
The Muslim Website Connection

UPDATE 1 Jan 21 1226:

The company’s domain is registered to:

Faisal Khetani
PO Box 270693
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53227

Administrative Contact:
Khetani, Faisal sportsfitness@gmail.com
3259 S.106th Street
West Allis, Wisconsin 53227
United States
(414) 543-9634 Fax

Site is down and experiencing technical difficulties

UPDATE 2: Jan 21 :

Since the Discount Mats website is still down with technical difficulties, here is another avenue of approach:

Faisal Khetani is also a supposed fitness expert/consultant and publisher of some fitness publications like the Dream Body newsletter. His other website is Weight Lifting Workout Routines. Another email address is: contact@weight-lifting-workout-routines.com

Another phone number: 414-736-8394

This additional venture of Khetani’s is also registered to the same above contact information. It’s definitely the same guy.

UPDATE 3: Jan 21

Snopes has since qualified their entry with this statement (as of this afternoon):

Since we’ve only heard from one side, we can’t yet rule out the possibility (as occurred with a similar email) that Sgt. Hess may have received a response from someone who was not authorized to be corresponding with the business’ customers.

They’ve also changed the button from green (”True”) to yellow to indicate “a statement of undetermined or ambiguous veracity”.

However, if the company owner wished to clear his good company’s name, and blame some nameless, faceless non-authorized employee, wouldn’t he respond to the inquiries by Snopes?

UPDATE 4: Jan 22

Faisal Khetani’s websites are all linked together, and are also linked to Quality Discount Scooters owned by Ahmed Bushra and Basketball Drills and Plays owned by Sajid Nasir.

Registered through: Teknon Domains
Domain Name: QUALITY-DISCOUNT-SCOOTERS.COM
Created on: 06-Dec-05
Expires on: 06-Dec-08
Last Updated on: 06-Dec-05

Administrative Contact:
Bushra, Ahmed qscooters@gmail.com
3270 W American Dr
Greenfield, Wisconsin 53221
United States
414-736-5971

Domain Name: www.basketball-drills-and-plays.com
Administrative Contact:
Sajid Nasir (sajidnasir@gmail.com)
+1.0014143240427
Fax:
3270 W American Dr
Greenfield, WI 53221
US

Creation date: 08 Mar 2003 03:22:22
Expiration date: 08 Mar 2007 03:22:22

Now there are some interesting coincidences about all these websites owned by Muslims who happen to all live in the Milwaukee area. The sports sites, one owned by Faisal and the other owned by Sajid are the exact same format and established the same month. They are nothing more than low-grade generic copy-and-paste sports information. The blogs were set up with a few token blog entries, with generic links (one even uses the sample WordPress links that come with the blog), and then abandoned. Likewise, the Discount Mats and Discount Scooters sites share similar formatting and generic links.

So what’s the deal with these mostly fake websites? I’m just askin’…

If I lived in the Milwaukee area, I’d be doin’ more than askin’…I’d be driving by the addresses above to see what’s what with those locations.

UPDATE 5: Jan 23

The VP of Discount Mats also happens to be the owner of Basketball Drills and Plays, Sajid Nasir. These Muslims are all inter-connected through their bogus websites. Interesting…

As well, Faisal Khetani, 24, runs his business out of his home, where he lives with his parents, Ramzan and Amina Khetani (both aged 55). (Ramzan Khetani works for the State of Wisconsin in their engineering department for state facilities. Does that ring any alarms for anyone?) His parents have been sure to tell the media that they “support the troops.” But Khetani has not bothered to say anything like that. However, we’re meant to believe Khetani when he says he “fired” that “employee”. Whatever. Let’s not be naive: there was no employee. His so-called business (which I’m thinking is not legit) is run out of his home, for pete’s sake.

UPDATE 6: Jan 23

Snopes has changed their classification again to “True” (green button). As well, they have updated their webpage with some stern statements from his buddy and so-called VP, Sajid Nasir:

“It’s really getting out of control,” said Nasir, who described the messages as “angry and vulgar.”

UPDATE 7: Jan 23

Fox picked up the story, as did Rush Limbaugh in his first hour today, and Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

UPDATE 8: Jan 23

From Newsbusters, who picked up this story two days later with no attribution to the bloggers (US!) who did all the work on outing this guy, but only cited the Milwaukee Journal and Fox:

Khetani claims that the person responsible for this ignorant affront to a US soldier was fired. In a recent communication with Miss. Kirkland, Khetani said “As I told my local reporters, the individual who made those statements has been held responsible and liable and what they spoke of apo addresses is absolutely true, but the second half was their own personal opinion and not the opinions of the company.”

Khetani also confirmed, though, that he and the members of his company are also against the efforts in Iraq which seems to contradict his first claim that the fired employee’s email didn’t represent the company.

I will say this, my company most certainly doesn’t support the war, and we do hope that the policies will change. However the personal opinions stated by the former member of Discount-Mats.com were very strong and personal and other members within our company certainly feel that his actions were not justified.

Let us hope that this man’s company finds a corresponding measure of “success” in equal levels with his support for the country to which he has immigrated in order to make his fortune.

In that same letter, Khetani also threatened Kirkland with unleashing the wrath of “major muslim organizations” on her for her “insults”. He closed by telling Kirkland, “you can be sure that there are million of muslim activists as well that will do something about your foul statements…. your statements against Muslims and your direct insults will not go unheard, I assure you.”

Threats, indeed. Bring it on, Muslim.

UPDATE 9: Jan 23 1329

I’ve found another bogus website affiliated with this Muslim group: Jewelry Spot, set up by 24 year-old engineering student Ahmed Bushra in June of ‘06, and like the other blogs, abandoned soon thereafter.

(414) 967-9509
2495 N Oakland Ave
Milwaukee, WI 53211
(map)

UPDATE TEN: Jan 23 1355 Tip from 1st Cav RVN (thank you, darlin’!)

Sajid Nasir, the so-called VP for Discount-Mats, is also a Muslim activist at UW-Milwaukee:

American Society of Muslim Students (Check out that link and this one!)
Classification: Social Action
Mail: Union Box 297
Office: Union 355
229-3078
Contacts:
Adam Abdi
Sajid Nasir
Email: muhamma2@uwm.edu
Purpose: Promotion of the teachings of Al-Islam in conjunction with UWM standards.
Activities: Lectures, seminars, forums, sales, exhibition, conventions, gatherings.

He penned this pungent missive to the Badger Herald:

Letters to the Editor
Thursday, February 16, 2006

Printing of cartoon hateful

After I heard that your newspaper reprinted the cartoons, I was deeply disturbed and sadened [sic]. I couldn’t help but ask, “why would they do something like this…why do they hate us?” I thought the university environment was supposed to encourage diversity, and learning, not bigetory [sic] and hatred. I personally demand that your paper appologizes [sic], and admits its mistake by reprinting the hatefull [sic] cartoons.

Sajid Nasir
UW-Milwaukee

As well, and in addition to the basketball drills and plays website, Nasir runs Yoga-Advice: another generic, copy-and-paste junk info website (with a dead blog, too):

Yoga-Advice
Contact: Sajid Nasir
1020 E Pleasant St
Phone: 414-324-0427
Milwaukee,WI 53212

How many bogus websites is that now? SIX?

UPDATE 11: Jan 23 1500

Faisal Khetani’s brother, Salman RamzanAli Khetani, is a Ph.D. with a B.S. in Electrical and Biomedical Engineering from my alma mater, Marquette University, and a fellowship award honorable mention from the National Science Foundation. When you do a google search for Salman Khetani, you’ll find that Salman Khetani is quite knowledgable and involved in toxicity studies, engineered tissue, and disease studies. Might be nothing. At the very least, it’s… interesting.

Tags: Terrorism