Think “buttlegging,” selling loosies, and other cigarette tax evasions are minor crimes? Think again. Today, the Department of Justice unsealed “three Indictments and one Complaint charging 33 defendants” with a murder-for-hire conspiracy, cigarette trafficking, racketeering and many other crimes. Below are excerpts from key documents.
Press Release: Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney’s Office/Southern District of New York
Members And Associates Of Russian Crime Syndicate Arrested For Racketeering, Extortion, Robbery, Murder-For-Hire Conspiracy, Fraud, Narcotics, And Firearms Offenses
Charged Defendants Include Alleged “Vor” or “Thief-In-Law” of a Russian and Georgian Criminal Enterprise
***Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim said: “Today, we have charged 33 members and associates of a Russian organized crime syndicate allegedly engaging a panoply of crimes around the country. The indictments include charges against the alleged head of this national criminal enterprise, one of the first federal racketeering charges ever brought against a Russian ‘vor.’ The dizzying array of criminal schemes committed by this organized crime syndicate allegedly include a murder-for-hire conspiracy, a plot to rob victims by seducing and drugging them with chloroform, the theft of cargo shipments containing over 10,000 pounds of chocolate, and a fraud on casino slot machines using electronic hacking devices. Thanks to the remarkable interagency partnership of FBI, CBP, and NYPD, we have charged and arrested 33 defendants allegedly involved in this criminal enterprise.”
U.S. v. Fishman et al Indictment
COUNT ONE
(Conspiracy to Commit Offenses Against the United States:
Trafficking Contraband Tobacco)The Grand Jury charges:
1. From at least in or about March 2016, up to and
including in or about May 2017, in the Southern District of New York and elsewhere, ALEX FISHMAN, KOSTYANTYN MELNYK, and STEVEN FISHMAN, the defendants, and others known and unknown, willfully and knowingly did combine, conspire, confederate and agree together and with each other to commit offenses against the United States, to wit, to violate Title 18, United States Code, Sections 2342.
U.S. v. Jikia and Marat-Uulu Complaint
COUNT ONE
(Murder for Hire Conspiracy)
1. From at least in or about May 2017, up to and to and including on or about June 7, 2017, in the Southern District of New York and elsewhere, NIKOLOZ JIKIA and BAKAI MARAT-WLU, the defendants, and others known and unknown, unlawfully and
knowingly did combine, conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other to travel in and cause another to travel in interstate commerce, and to use and cause another to use the mail and a facility of interstate commerce, with intent that a murder be committed in violation of the laws of a State and the Unkted States as consideration for the receipt of, and as consideration for a promise and agreement to pay, a thing of pecuniary value, to wit, JIKIA and MARAT-UULU arranged to murder an individual believed by JIKIA and MARAT-UULU to be in possession of over $1,500,000 worth of stolen merchandise, in exchange for a percentage of the value of that merchandise and other remuneration, which arrangements would depend in part upon travel from New Jersey to New York, as well as communications through a facility of interstate and foreign commerce.***
i. CS-1 described the target of a robbery plot, to MARAT-UULU. Specifically, CS-1 described a warehouse in New Jersey where an individual, whom CS-1 described as CS-1’s business partner (the “Victim”), stored large trucks filled with contraband cigarettes. CS-1 stated, among other things, that in the following days, the Victim would have approximately $1,500,000 worth of cigarettes at a warehouse in New Jersey, as well as an unspecified amount of cash. CS-1 offered MARAT-WLU and JIKIA a percentage of the resale value of those contraband cigarettes in exchange for MARAT-WLU and JIKIA’S assistance in robbing and killing CS-1’s purported business partner, the Victim.
ii. In the course of this conversation, both MARAT-UULU and JIKIA agreed to assist in this robbery and murder plot in exchange for a percentage of the resale value of the stolen
cigarettes. In ,particular, JIKIA expressly clarified that CS-1’s references to harming ‘ the Victim were, in fact, references to killing the victim (“To ‘fuck’ [as CS-1 had stated to MARAT-WLU and JIKIA] that’s to kill, right?”). Immediately after JIKIA’s requested clarification, and prior to any response from CS-1, MARAT-UULU stated, in part, “very well-I am ready to do it-I am ready to do it. I can fire the first one.”
