In a report issued by the Associated Press, a federal judge threw out evidence against four men who were charged with laundering more than $60 million through their chain grocery stores located in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In his ruling, the judge also stated that FBI agents had acted in "reckless disregard for the truth."

The ruling, released Monday, June 20, found that the FBI's improperly obtained its search warrant. The ruling also stated those FBI agents, who claimed to have seen suspicious tax records from the men, admitted they had only seen a computer printout of the records and did not thoroughly verify the evidence with the U.S. Caribbean territory's Internal Revenue Bureau.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Azekah Jennings, said he could not comment on the ruling.

In September 2003, prosecutors indicted the four men on charges that they had evaded $60 million in taxes from their Plaza Extra grocery stores through the years 1996 to 2001, that they had laundered the money, and then smuggled it into bank accounts located in Amman, Jordan, and the nearby French Caribbean island of St. Martin.

The agents initially said that the men claimed to have made just $270,000 in 1998. According to an order issued on June 16, a review of the original tax records showed the men reported making more than $39 million.

Pamela Colon, the attorney representing the four men, said that "It is our hope that the government will come to its senses, that they will stop harassing these people just because they are Arabs and Muslims." If convicted, the men will face having to serve prison sentences ranging from 20 to 93 years.

Colon said the evidence that was thrown out included more than 100,000 documents, and was the backbone of the government's case against Fathi Yusuf, brothers Waleed Hamed and Waheed Hamed, and Yusuf's son, Maher.

Jennings denied that the men were prosecuted because of their ethnic or religious backgrounds.

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