Alleged Informant Wants $10M from FBI

LOS ANGELES (CN) - A man who claims to be an FBI informant tasked with infiltrating the Islamic community in greater Los Angeles to get information on Usama bin Laden and al Qaeda demands $10 million from the FBI and the Irvine Police Department, claiming the Bureau bailed on him when he faced deadly peril in federal prison. Among his assignments, the man says, was "dating Muslim women and engaging in sexual relations with Muslim women."

In his Superior Court complaint, Craig Monteilh claims he was pulled from his job as an undercover informant for the FBI's Violent Crime division and sent to the National Security and Counterterrorism division to go undercover and gather information on "high priority targets" including Usama bin Laden.

Monteilh says he accepted because he was "inspired by the opportunity to assist in the protection of this great nation."

Monteilh claims he made himself part of the Islamic community in Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties. To do this, he says, he learned to speak Arabic, learned the Quran and led prayer in mosques.

Monteilh says the FBI wanted him to gain the confidence of high priority targets and tasked him with "dating Muslim women and engaging in sexual relations with Muslim women," among other things.

In March 2007, Monteilh says, he learned from his supervisor that Irvine police Det. Ron Carr was investigating him for grand theft. Monteilh was already on probation at the time.

He says the FBI told him repeatedly that everything would be fine and that he should not give away his status as an informant, because it would jeopardize security. He claims he was told that the theft case would be dissolved through an "exit strategy."

Monteilh says that FBI Special Agent Barbara Wells conspired with Det. Carr to "remove Mr. Monteilh from the FBI Counterterrorism program," because she was embarrassed about missing an opportunity to act on information Monteith had provided about bomb-making materials he found in a mosque.

Wells was "paranoid" that he would speak to the press about the Bureau's religious and racial profiling, its entrapment and blackmailing of Muslims, and illegal wiretapping, according to the complaint.

Monteilh was arrested in December 2007 and "forced under the color of authority by the FBI and its agents, to plead guilty to grand theft, suffer a felony conviction, and endure sixteen months in prison for work performed at the direction of the FBI," his complaint states.

While in prison, Monteilh says, he helped the FBI watch a man whom Orange County Deputy District Attorney Joe Williams called "a principle figure in the Romanian Mafia."

But word leaked through the prison system that Monteilh was a "snitch," and hits were ordered on him by Muslim extremists, the Mexican mafia, the Romanian mafia and white supremacists, he says.

Monteilh says that despite telling the FBI about this danger, he remained in the general prison population and was stabbed with a "shank" by white supremacists and other groups. He says he continually had to "fight for his life."

A member of the Romanian mafia, now a fugitive in California, allegedly vowed to "cut off the head of Craig Monteilh," he says.

Monteilh says he has been released from prison and is no longer on parole but lives in constant fear. He demands $10 million, alleging civil rights violations and negligence by the FBI, the Irvine Police Department, Ron Carr and Barbara Wells.

He is represented by Adam Krolikowski of Irvine.

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