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Gang of Diamond Fraudsters Arrested
Apr 6, 2017 9:13 AM
By Rapaport News
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RAPAPORT... New York police have arrested 10 men accused of defrauding
wholesalers out of diamonds valued at more than $9 million, the US Attorney’s
Office for the Southern District of New York announced.
The accused wrote bad checks, forged documents and devised
long stories to cheat their victims in New York, Las Vegas and Mumbai, the
statement said, citing allegations in a Manhattan federal court claim that were
revealed Wednesday.
Police are still looking for two more men who have been
charged in the scheme.
“The twelve charged defendants allegedly participated in a
global conspiracy to defraud diamond dealers out of more than $9 million,”
acting Manhattan US attorney Joon Kim said. “Centered in Manhattan’s diamond
district, America’s busiest hub in the diamond trade, the defendants allegedly
took advantage of an industry-wide system of credit and trust to obtain largely
untraceable diamonds, and then, using various allegedly illegal schemes,
refused to pay.”
To avoid detection, the group focused on obtaining small melee
diamonds, which are virtually untraceable because they do not have numerical
identifiers, according to the court complaint.
Their most common technique was to build up credit and trust
with the diamond supplier before walking away with millions of dollars in
diamonds at the moment of maximum credit, the complaint explained.
In one of the schemes described, the accused deployed an ad-hoc
strategy to obtain as much of the diamond inventory of a wholesaler as possible
without full payment, causing the victim more than $2.4 million in losses. The plan
was carried out between around January 2015 and November 2016 by Godel “Gary”
Sezanayev, Albert Foozailov, Imanil “Eddy” Muratov, Manashe “Michael” Sezanayev
and Ali Javidnezhad, according to the statement.
In another example, three of the accused – Sezanayev,
Arkadiy Israilov and Nizamuden Akbari – conspired to defraud a jewelry merchant
at a Las Vegas trade show around May 2015.
In a third alleged scheme from around December 2015 to
December 2016, Foozailov, Nathan Itzchaki, Mark Mullakandov, Mark Natanzon, Menachem
Abramov and Sholom Muratov convinced “numerous” victims in Mumbai to send
diamonds by interstate carrier by saying they would pay for them, even though
they had no intention to honor the agreement. This caused these victims losses of
more than $7.4 million, the statement said.
“Diamonds have value
worldwide so it comes as no surprise that an alleged organized ring would
target diamond wholesalers in Manhattan’s diamond district in a worldwide
scheme,” said FBI assistant director-in-charge William F. Sweeney Jr.
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Tags:
crime, fraud, las vegas, mumbai, new york, police, Rapaport News
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