Professor sentenced in drug scheme

An assistant professor of finance at the University of Houston-Victoria has been sentenced to one year in federal prison for helping a Houston-area drug ring transfer money from a massive synthetic cannabinoid operation to bankers in Jordan.

After completing his prison term, Omar Maher Al Nasser, 37, of Houston, will serve two years of supervised release and pay a $10,000 fine, U.S. District Judge Gray Miller ordered this week.

Federal prosecutors withdrew an additional charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

His attorney, Dick DeGuerin, argued for leniency, saying Al Nasser had no involvement in the criminal drug enterprise and was a contributing member of society with a young family to support.

“He had nothing whatsoever to do with the synthetic marijuana. Nothing. Zero,” DeGuerin said. “I can chalk up what he did to naivete and camaraderie within the Jordanian community here.”

He said Al Nasser did a favor for an acquaintance, wiring money once to Jordan without a license to do so.

Al Nasser, who has been in federal custody for nearly a year, remains employed at UH-Victoria but has been on leave without pay since Sept. 1, according to Paula Cobler, the university’s director of marketing and communications.

Now that he has been sentenced, however, Cobler said, “UHV officials are considering action appropriate to the situation.”

Al Nasser was one of 16 defendants arrested in one of the largest stings nationwide in connection with a street drug known as Kush, a synthetic cannabinoid made from spraying a chemical mix onto leafy materials.

It is sometimes sold in smoke shops or corner stores as potpourri that is not intended for human consumption, but it can be deadly when smoked.

Al Nasser pleaded guilty in December to aiding and abetting an unlicensed money transmitting business that wired more than $200,000 from banks in the United States to accounts in Jordan.

The operation netted $35 million from the sale of more than 9.5 tons of Kush, officials said.

Investigators linked Al Nasser to a major distributor of the drug in the Southern District of Texas, which includes Houston.

Defense attorney Todd Ward told the judge that Al Nasser had no idea about the drug aspect of the operation.

Al Nasser, a naturalized U.S. citizen, had dabbled in day trading, his attorneys said.

Al Nasser began working for UH-Victoria in 2008.

He was set to begin teaching a class on financial management at the school’s Sugar Land campus at the time of his arrest in April.

A magistrate judge declined to release him on bail.