Shahzad Gained Citizenship Last Year

Faisal Shahzad, the Connecticut man accused in the Times Square bombing attempt, became a naturalized U.S. citizen last year shortly before traveling to his native Pakistan, law enforcement officials said.

Shahzad -- who reportedly has a home in foreclosure -- is said to be is talking to investigators and implicated himself in the plot, reportedly telling police he acted alone, sources said.

Shahzad confessed to buying an SUV, rigging it with a homemade bomb and driving it Saturday night into Times Square, where he tried to detonate it, according to court papers.

In Connecticut, a picture of the man is slowly beginning to emerge.

Shahzad became a U.S. citizen in April 2009 and passed all the criminal and national security background checks required for citizenship.

Other law enforcement officials familiar with the inquiry say investigators plan to go through his citizenship application line by line to see if he lied about anything. He became a citizen in Hartford, Conn.

Court records show he defaulted on a $200,000 mortgage on his Shelton home and the property is in foreclosure.

The Associated Press has obtained records that show that Chase Home Finance LLC sued Faisal Shahzad in September to foreclose on the home.

On Tuesday morning authorities were at the two-story grayish-brown colonial which looked as if it had been unoccupied for a while, with grass growing in the driveway and bags of garbage lying about.

The foreclosure records show Shahzad took out the mortgage on the property in 2004, and he co-owned the home with a woman named Huma Mian.

The foreclosure case is pending in Milford Superior Court.

The Associated Press left a message on Tuesday with an attorney for Chase's law firm. The records show Shahzad and Mian didn't have lawyers for the case.

Neighbors offered diverging descriptions of Shahzad but agreed that he kept to himself.

Brenda Thurman said Shahzad had told her husband he worked on Wall Street, while another neighbor, Audrey Sokol, said she thought he worked in nearby Norwalk.

Thurman, 37, said he lived in Shelton with his wife and two small children until last year.

"He was a little bit strange," she said. "He didn't like to come out during the day."

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