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Two of five men arrested on Turnpike unhappy with prison and jail time
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Prison and jail terms were imposed Monday on two of the five men charged a year ago on the Ohio Turnpike with making false identification and credit cards.
Both men protested the sentences, but Judge Peter Kontos of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court didn’t have much patience for their complaints.
Jibril M. Abdiselam, 25, of Seattle, was sentenced to nine months in prison after pleading guilty earlier to forgery and complicity to identity fraud.
Zakaria O. Warsame, 26, also of Seattle, was sentenced to two months in the county jail and five years’ probation after pleading guilty earlier to complicity to identity fraud and possessing criminal tools.
The Ohio State Highway Patrol pulled over their car Nov. 12, 2015, on the turnpike in Braceville Township, finding a scanner, embosser and other tools used to make fake cards. Marijuana also was found.
Judge Kontos told Abdiselam he is getting a prison term because of two previous convictions, one of them a residential burglary from the Seattle area.
He was convicted of crimes in 2011 and 2013, the judge said.
“Those are the things that tell me you are not amenable to” probation, Judge Kontos told Abdiselam.
“I thought I was getting probation,” Abdiselam protested.
Judge Kontos said Abdiselam would not have committed his most recent crimes if he’d been the judge sentencing Abdiselam on his 2013 conviction. Abdiselam still would have been in prison when the turnpike incident occurred Nov. 12, 2015, the judge said.
Warsame told Judge Kontos he was only the driver of the car pulled over by a trooper for driving violations.
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Warsame said.
But Judge Kontos explained that the driver of a car involved in criminal activity still can be an accomplice to crimes.
After Warsame suggested that he now wanted to go to trial, Judge Kontos told deputies to take Warsame away.
Cases involving the three other men involved in the arrest are still pending.
Some of the five are originally from Somalia, and their arrests occurred one day before deadly terrorist attacks occurred in Paris.
But Gabe Wildman, assistant county prosecutor, said the men apparently had not been tied to any other type of illegal criminal activity other than identity and credit-card fraud.
County jail booking records list Abdiselam’s place of birth as Kenya.