A machine gun fanatic living in the country illegally was charged Wednesday with supporting ISIS — after his ex-wife ratted him out for getting a “sham” green-card marriage to a Bronx stripper, The Post has learned.
Mansuri Manuchekhri, a Tajikstan-born truck driver living in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, funneled $70,000 to “ISIS-affiliated individuals” between December 2021 and April 2023 — believing that the money was going to the families of slain ISIS fighters, the feds charged.
He also allegedly boasted to his terror-sympathizer buddies overseas about his firearms prowess.
“Thank God, I am ready, brother,” Manuchekhri, 34, texted a Turkish contact alongside a 17-second video of him firing an assault rifle at a target at a New Jersey shooting range, according to a federal complaint.
“I go for training at least once or twice a week,” he boasted to the same man alongside a similar video, court papers allege.
Federal agents uncovered a photo on Manuchekhri’s iCloud of him proudly pointing two AK-47 rifles into the air, court papers show.
The alleged terror sympathizer entered the country from Tajikistan in June 2016 on a non-immigrant tourist visa and remained in the country after it expired that December, authorities said.
He then married a Bronx stripper in a “sham marriage” in March 2017, yet his efforts to obtain legal status in the country failed because he failed to provide supporting documents, according to the complaint.
He was living in Brooklyn illegally at the time of his arrest, the feds said.
In a twist, Manuchekhri’s ex-wife snitched on him, calling the New York State Terror Tip Hotline and telling authorities he was likely to “commit acts of violence” and about the green-card marriage, according to law enforcement sources.
Text messages between Manuchekhri and the stripper make clear their entanglement had nothing to do with love.
“Not to sound like an asshole but I’m not signing the papers until I get 2000 out front,” the woman, who was not identified, texted him after he asked her to sign divorce papers in 2021 — as part of a separate failed scheme to gain permanent US residency, court papers say.
After Manuchekhri replied “I don’t have that kind of money,” the stripper responded, “I’ll give you time to save it up…but im not signing the papers till I get part,” the papers say.
But the dancer soured on Manuchekhri after he stiffed her on the $200 per month fee he’d promised her, court papers allege.
“Since you’ve been completely ignoring me IM NOT FILING FOR NO DIVORCE your just gonna be stuck since you want to keep playing me like i’m stupid!!! Changing my number don’t look for me!!!!” she texted him, according to the complaint.
Manuchekhri also acknowledged to a friend that he had only met his “wife” twice — for the wedding and then to give her money.
“Yes she stripper lol,” he told a friend in one of the text messages, the complaint says.
Manuchekhri was held without bail during a hearing in Brooklyn federal court Wednesday afternoon, after prosecutors argued that his texts to his ISIS-affiliated contacts were evidence that “he may be prepared to take violent action on his own in furtherance of ISIS’s goals.”
His lawyer suggested that even if Manuchekhri knew where the money he sent overseas was going, it doesn’t prove he’s a terrorist himself.
“I look forward to seeing the government’s actual evidence proving that allegedly sending financial support to orphans and widows makes him a terrorist,” Jullian Harris-Calvin, Federal Defenders of New York, said in an email.
One of the men that Manuchekhri schemed to funnel the cash to was arrested by Turkish authorities for a terrorism attack car bombing on the Jan.28, 2024 Roman Catholic Church in Istanbul, the feds said.
Manuchekhri also told his ex-wife that he admired Sayfullo Saipov, the Uzbek national who committed an infamous terror attack in New York City in 2017, the complaint alleges.
Saipov is “in heaven now,” the accused terror supporter told her, court papers say.
Manuchekhri faces up to 45 years in prison on charges of conspiring to provide material support to ISIS, possessing firearms while unlawfully in the United States, and immigration fraud.
