https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2024/07/24/columbus-ohio-planned-parenthood-clinic-reynoldsburg-mohamed-waes/74532796007/

A phone call just over two years ago threatening to burn down the Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio clinic in Columbus with the employees inside and an unrelated money laundering conviction led Wednesday to a sentence of 5½ years in a federal prison for a Reynoldsburg man.

Mohamed Farah Waes, 33, pleaded guilty Feb. 9 to a felony charge of communicating interstate threats and a misdemeanor charge under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which prohibits a person from intentionally interfering with or intimidating someone because that person is providing reproductive health care services.

The charges stem from a July 5, 2022 call that Waes made to the Planned Parenthood facility because it provided reproductive health care services.

On Wednesday, Waes was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Columbus to 5½ years in prison and three years of supervised release.

“This defendant threatened to burn down a reproductive health clinic in order to intimidate its employees from providing care to patients,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division said in a media release. “Using threats of violence to obstruct access to reproductive health care is simply unlawful. The Justice Department will continue to protect both patients seeking reproductive health services and providers offering those services, wherever and whenever these criminal violations occur.” 

The sentence includes prison time for Waes' previous guilty plea to an unrelated charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Federak prosecutors say scammers created fake email domains which mimicked legitimate email domains and then sent emails to various companies impersonating vendors, asking that payments be made on actual invoices to bank accounts which were controlled by Waes and others.

Waes successfully laundered $273,982.08 out of a total of $1,972,793 in business email compromise fraud proceeds, investigators with the FBI and Internal Revenue Service in Cinncinnati found. As part of his sentence, Waes was ordered to pay back $273,982.08 in restitution for the money he laundered.

Waes could have faced up to a maximum of 10 years in prison on each felony count.