Attackers borrowed $28,000 before attack

chika ebuzor

December 9, 2015 8:03 AM

Fourteen people were killed and 21 others were wounded in the assault. The couple died several hours later in a shootout with police.

Syed Rizwan Farook is pictured in his California driver"s license, in this undated handout provided by the California Department of Motor Vehicles, December 3, 2015.

A married couple who killed 14 people in a California shooting rampage the FBI is investigating as an act of terrorism borrowed about $28,000 from an online lender, a sum deposited into their bank account about two weeks before the attack, sources said on Tuesday.

Disclosure of the unsecured loan the husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, took out from San Francisco-based Prosper, a peer-to-peer lending service, offered a new glimpse into the money trail under scrutiny by investigators of last week's mass shooting.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has described Farook, the U.S.-born son of Pakistani immigrants, and his Pakistani-born wife, Tashfeen Malik, 29, as a couple "radicalized" by Islamic extremist ideology.

Malik, who spent a good portion of her life in Saudi Arabia and married Farook there before returning with him to California in the summer of 2014, is believed by investigators to have pledged allegiance on Facebook to the leader of the militant group Islamic State just before the killings.

The wife's extremist views took form before she came to the United States, but it remains to be seen whether she and her husband were indoctrinated by other individuals or whether they turned to radical ideology on their own, the FBI has said.

Authorities say the heavily armed couple opened fire on Farook's co-workers from the county Environmental Health Department during a holiday party at the Inland Regional Center social services agency in San Bernardino, about 60 miles (100 km) east of Los Angeles.

If the massacre - the deadliest burst of U.S. gun violence in three years - proves to have been the work of killers inspired by Islamic militants, it would mark the most lethal such attack in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.

In yet another twist to the case, state marital records examined by Reuters on Tuesday revealed that the man said by authorities to have furnished the couple with the two assault-style rifles used in the attack was related by marriage to Farook's family.

Specifically, Enrique Marquez, whose home was raided over the weekend and was being questioned by federal investigators on Tuesday, became married last year to Mariya Chernykh, whose sister is married to Farook's older brother, Raheel Farook.

While investigations into assaults branded as acts of terrorism often focus on the money behind them, U.S. government officials said the FBI's examination of the couple's finances has not linked them with any foreign group.

chika ebuzor