The Newburgh Sting: The Informant, the Trial, and the Release

The Newburgh Sting was a 2009 FBI counterterrorism operation in which a paid informant recruited four impoverished men from Newburgh, New York — James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams, and Laguerre Payen — into a fake plot to bomb two Bronx synagogues and shoot down military planes at a nearby Air National Guard base. The weapons were inert, the targets were chosen by the informant, and the plot was, in the sentencing judge’s later words, one where “the real lead conspirator was the United States.”¹ All four men were convicted in 2010 and sentenced to 25 years in federal prison. In 2023 and 2024, the same judge who had sentenced them granted each one compassionate release, calling the punishment unjust even as the convictions remained on the books.²

The Informant at the Center

The operation was built around Shahed Hussain, a Pakistani-born man who had worked as a paid FBI informant since 2002. He first came to the Bureau’s attention after being caught running a fraudulent driver’s license scheme at the New York DMV; facing deportation and criminal charges, he agreed to cooperate.³

In 2007, the FBI assigned Hussain to infiltrate mosques in Newburgh and search for radicals. He was paid roughly $100,000 over the course of the operation.⁴ Posing as a wealthy Pakistani businessman with ties to the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, he began frequenting the Masjid al-Ikhlas in Newburgh, arriving in a luxury car and buying congregants meals and gifts.⁵

The Four Men Who Were Recruited

Newburgh at the time was an economically devastated city marked by drug crime, poverty, and boarded-up storefronts.⁴ The four men the FBI ended up prosecuting were products of that environment, and all four had converted to Islam while incarcerated.

James Cromitie, born in 1964, met Hussain in the mosque parking lot in June 2008. He had 27 prior arrests and had spent 12 years in state prison, most recently for selling cocaine to an undercover officer, and was working low-wage jobs at the time. Court records show him expressing disgust at U.S. military actions in Afghanistan during their early conversations.⁶

David Williams, born in 1981, was a cook with a prior conviction for cocaine possession. When Cromitie brought him into the plot in early 2009, his younger brother had reportedly just been hospitalized with a serious illness.⁷ Onta Williams, born in 1976, had a record limited to drug offenses and had struggled with crack and cocaine addiction since his teens. Laguerre Payen, born in Haiti in 1981, was the most vulnerable of the four: illiterate, homeless, diagnosed with schizophrenia, and on psychiatric medication. Mosque leaders had noted he had “serious psychological problems.”⁶

How the Plot Was Built

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals would later acknowledge that Hussain “inspired the crime, provoked it, planned it, financed it, equipped it, and furnished the time and targets.”¹

Hussain first tried to motivate Cromitie with promises of spiritual reward. When that failed, he offered money: a BMW, cash, and, on one wiretapped occasion, an unauthorized offer of $250,000. When Cromitie still stalled, Hussain pushed him to pick targets, recruit others, and procure guns. Cromitie eventually brought in the other three men, though the documentary made about the case would later assert that the four did not know one another before the investigation.⁸

Hussain also chose the specific targets: the Riverdale Temple and the Riverdale Jewish Center in the Bronx, along with the Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh. The FBI supplied inert C-4 fashioned into three improvised explosive devices and a disabled Stinger surface-to-air missile. Hussain drove the men across state lines to inspect the fake weapons, a step that also helped establish federal jurisdiction.¹ On the evening of May 20, 2009, after the men planted what they believed were live car bombs outside the synagogues, law enforcement moved in with an armored vehicle, police dogs, and automatic weapons. The FBI and NYPD had coordinated camera crews and helicopters for the arrest.⁵

The Trial and the Judge’s Extraordinary Statement

The four were tried in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York before Judge Colleen McMahon and convicted on October 18, 2010, on eight offenses including conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and conspiracy to kill officers and employees of the United States.⁵ Two of the charges carried mandatory minimum sentences of 25 years.

The defense argued entrapment. To succeed, the defendants had to show they lacked any predisposition to commit the crimes and that the offenses would not have occurred without government incentives. The jury found them predisposed, pointing to recorded conversations in which Cromitie said he wanted to “do something to America” and die as a martyr.⁹

At sentencing on June 29, 2011, Judge McMahon condemned the government’s conduct in unusually direct language. “Only the government could have made a terrorist out of Mr. Cromitie, whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in its scope,” she said.⁷ She said she believed “beyond a shadow of a doubt that there would have been no crime here except the government instigated it, planned it and brought it to fruition,”⁴ and described the government as having “created acts of terrorism out of his fantasies of bravado and bigotry, and then made those fantasies come true.”³

McMahon nonetheless concluded she had no legal authority to sentence below the mandatory minimum. She sentenced Cromitie, David Williams, and Onta Williams each to 25 years. Payen’s sentencing was delayed pending a psychiatric evaluation; he ultimately received the same term.² McMahon still held the defendants responsible for agreeing to participate, describing them as driven by “primitive, tribal hatreds” and “bigotry and mindless hatred.”⁷

Why the Convictions Held Up on Appeal

A divided three-judge panel of the Second Circuit affirmed the convictions on August 22, 2013, in United States v. Cromitie, 727 F.3d 92. Judge Jon Newman, writing for the majority, held that the recorded statements showed a “state of mind that inclines them to inflict harm on the United States” and a willingness to accept an operational plan once it was offered. The court ruled that in terrorism cases, the government need not prove a specific, well-advanced plan; a “generalized idea or intent to inflict harm” was enough to establish predisposition. The panel also rejected claims of outrageous government conduct, even while acknowledging that the government had instigated and orchestrated the plot.¹⁰

Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs dissented forcefully. He argued Cromitie had been entrapped as a matter of law. Wanting to “die like a martyr” and “do something to America” were “wishes, not designs,” Jacobs wrote, and the government had failed to prove that the criminal design existed in Cromitie’s mind before the informant put it there. “The design here was entirely formed by the government, and fed to Cromitie. He liked it, but he didn’t form it.” Without the informant, Jacobs concluded, Cromitie “would have continued to stew in his rage and ignorance indefinitely.”¹¹

The U.S. Supreme Court denied review on October 6, 2014.¹²

Compassionate Release, More Than a Decade Later

In July 2023, Judge McMahon granted compassionate release to David Williams, Onta Williams, and Laguerre Payen, reducing their sentences to time served plus 90 days.¹³ On January 19, 2024, she ordered Cromitie’s release on the same terms. He had served 15 years.¹⁴

McMahon’s ruling cited “extraordinary and compelling reasons” for the reductions. She wrote that the government “used an unscrupulous operative to inveigle four impoverished men into agreeing to commit serious terrorism offenses that they never could have dreamed up on their own.” She called Hussain a “villain” and “most unsavory,” describing him as someone sent to “troll among the poorest and weakest of men for ‘terrorists’ who might prove susceptible to an offer of much-needed cash in exchange for committing a faux crime.” She found the 25-year sentences “unjust” and “greater than necessary to effectuate any of the statutory goals of sentencing.”¹³¹⁴

The defendants’ motions also cited the COVID-19 pandemic, rehabilitation during 14 years of incarceration, and, in Payen’s case, severe mental illness. The Justice Department opposed the releases. The convictions themselves were not overturned.¹³²

What Newburgh Says About FBI Sting Operations

Newburgh became a focal point for a broader argument about how the FBI has conducted counterterrorism investigations since September 11, when the Bureau shifted toward preemptive intelligence gathering.

A 2014 report by Human Rights Watch and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute found that nearly half of federal counterterrorism convictions had resulted from informant-based cases, and about 30 percent of those involved sting operations in which the informant played an active role. The report identified a pattern of targeting vulnerable people, including those with intellectual or mental disabilities and those living in poverty.¹⁵ Research by scholars Jesse Norris and Hanna Grol-Prokopczyk found that “Black Muslim identity” was the most consistent predictor of being targeted in an FBI sting.¹⁶

The entrapment defense has proved almost entirely futile in these cases. As of the most recent available data, no federal terrorism defendant who went to trial and claimed entrapment achieved an acquittal on those grounds.¹⁶ Courts have consistently held that even when the government supplies the idea, the financing, the weapons, and the opportunity, a defendant who shows ideological willingness is “predisposed” enough for a conviction to stand. The Brennan Center for Justice has called for Congress to pass a legislative charter imposing stricter investigative standards and for stronger independent oversight of FBI informant programs.¹

What Happened to Shahed Hussain

Hussain later became connected to one of the deadliest transportation disasters in recent New York history. He owned Prestige Limousine, an upstate New York company. On October 6, 2018, one of its stretch limousines suffered a catastrophic brake failure on a hill in Schoharie, New York, reaching speeds above 100 miles per hour before crashing into a parked SUV and trees at an intersection. Twenty people were killed, including all 17 passengers, the driver, and two bystanders.¹⁷

The National Transportation Safety Board found the company showed an “egregious disregard for safety,” and the vehicle had been ordered out of service by state officials one month before the crash. Hussain’s son, Nauman Hussain, who ran the company’s day-to-day operations, was convicted of 20 counts of second-degree manslaughter and sentenced to five to 15 years in prison.¹⁸ Shahed Hussain returned to Pakistan after the crash and was not charged in connection with the accident.¹⁷

1
Brennan Center for Justice. Newburgh Four Terrorism Case Releases Show Dire Need for FBI Reforms
2
The New York Times. Last of Newburgh Four Ordered Released in Terrorism Case
3
Mother Jones. The Informant
4
The Guardian. Newburgh Four: The FBI Stung and the Men Went Down
5
FBI New York Field Office. Four Convicted of Plotting Attacks in New York
6
Peabody Awards. The Newburgh Four Case Study
7
Courthouse News Service. Three of Newburgh Four Get Minimum Sentences
8
NPR. Newburgh Sting: Terrorist Cell, or Group Sold on a Trap by FBI?
9
Courthouse News Service. Newburgh Four Lose Entrapment Appeal
10
FindLaw. United States v. Cromitie, 727 F.3d 92
11
U.S. Courts. United States v. Cromitie, Dissent
12
Supreme Court of the United States. Cromitie v. United States, No. 13-9679
13
Times Union. Judge Orders Release of Three Newburgh Four Defendants
14
VOA News. Judge Orders Release of Last Newburgh Four Defendant
15
Human Rights Watch. Illusion of Justice: Human Rights Abuses in US Terrorism Prosecutions
16
PBS Frontline. FBI Sting Operations and Terrorism Since September 11
17
CBS News. Limo Crash Operator Trial
18
WAMC. Schoharie Crash Limo Company Operator’s Request to Shorten Sentence Denied