Additional Support for Bassel Elnamara

Asalam Alaykum,

Br. Bassel received his first invoice from his attorney, which totaled $15,930. Alhamdulilah, we were able to raise $11,735 from the original GoFundMe, which you can find here.

Unfortunately, the case has dragged on for almost a year and a half and we anticipate additional time and legal fees. Therefore, we are once again asking for your support.

As a friend, brother, and fellow board member with Abu Rabee, I witnessed firsthand how hard he worked for years to serve our community. Therefore, my hope is that we as a community can now serve him by covering all of his legal fees and no money comes out of his pocket.

At this point, we don’t know the total legal fees until the case comes to a close so we would like to set an initial goal of raising $15,000 with the hope that would suffice to cover all of the legal case fees.

The following is a timeline of the case thus far prepared by Mitch Allen, Br. Bassel's attorney:

- On February 10, 2022, the ISGD filed a Complaint in the Dayton Commons Court against Bassel Elnamara claiming that over a course of a number of years from 2014 to 2020, he fraudulently “converted” $177,617.86 in money belonging to ISGD to his own use without the authorization of the organization.

- On March 4, 2022, Mr. Elnamara filed an answer denying these allegations and asserting affirmative legal defenses to ISGD’s claims.

- During the month of March 2022, the parties (Mr. Elnamara and ISGD) exchanged discovery requests as part of the discovery phase of the legal case asking for information and documentations in the other’s possession relating to the claims.

- Among other things, Mr. Elnamara requested a list of all the witnesses who claimed that he had taken money without authorization, a list of the names and addresses of all past and present board members, and a copy of ISGD’s QuickBooks file for the time period in question.

- ISGD still has not yet provided all the information requested and Mr. Elnamara has filed motions for the Court to compel the production of this information.

- Among other things, and as part of the discovery phase of the legal case and in a desperate attempt to find any adverse information against Mr. Elnamara, ISGD requested all of Mr. Elnamara’s and his wife’s bank and credit card statements from June 1, 2014, through April 30, 2020.

- This is obviously excessive and not reasonably related to the litigation of the legal case so Mr. Elnamara has filed for Protective Orders from the Court to stop this invasion of his privacy.

- As of this point, June 2023, after more than a year of ISGD’s frivolous lawsuit without facts and basis to support it, the discovery phase is still not complete in this case and will likely take a few more months to complete, including taking depositions of the parties and witnesses.

- At this point, more than a year into this case, ISGD has produced nothing that suggests that any transaction was improper or not authorized by the ISGD board at the time. Meanwhile, Mr. Elnamara has produced documentation as to 94%, ($166,959.00) of the transactions ISGD had questions about, showing the payments on behalf of ISGD and the reason he obtained for the reimbursement. The other 6% cannot be accounted for at this time because ISGD will not provide the QuickBooks files that contain the relevant information for completing the discovery phase of the case.

Thank you for your consideration in helping our brother fight this case.

Mohammad Khalil