Three Brooklyn-based defendants — Devan Abrams, 39, of New York City; Azad Khizgilov, 46, of Staten Island; and Roman Shaulov, 53, of Brooklyn — have pleaded guilty to a sweeping conspiracy to commit mail, wire, and bank fraud tied to a multi-million-dollar scheme involving illegally imported prescription drugs and fraudulent credit card processing. The operation, which ran from 2013 to 2017, funneled tens of millions of dollars in illicit payments through a web of fake companies and shell websites, duping major credit card processors into enabling the sale of unapproved pharmaceuticals from China, Russia, and India.
The defendants specialized not in selling the drugs directly, but in laundering the payments. While online pharmacies based overseas sold controlled and prescription medications to U.S. consumers, the credit card networks had policies blocking such transactions. The defendants’ job was to bypass those safeguards. Using front companies with forged documentation and fabricated websites selling imagined products, they submitted merchant applications under the names of recruited accomplices. Once approved, these merchant accounts were hijacked to process payments for illegal pharmaceuticals — all while appearing legitimate to banking systems.
Fraud didn’t stop at the transaction. To prevent detection, the trio — along with co-conspirators including Garri Shihman, 49, of Parkland, Florida, and Gennady Nudelman, 45, of Delray Beach, who were sentenced in 2019 — operated a call center staffed with employees trained to intercept customer complaints. When cardholders called to dispute charges for drugs they didn’t recognize, the operators posed as customer service reps for the front companies, deflecting suspicion and stopping fraud reports before they reached the credit card issuers.
Federal investigators cracked the scheme through controlled purchases and coordinated search warrants. Raids at two Brooklyn office locations — 1812 Bath Avenue and later 1706 Crospey Avenue — uncovered a paper trail of shell company filings, fake websites, and internal records linking Abrams, Khizgilov, and Shaulov directly to the fraud. The evidence confirmed the scale: tens of millions of dollars in processed payments for narcotics, erectile dysfunction pills, and other controlled substances shipped directly from overseas labs with no U.S. regulatory approval.
The fraud exploited a critical vulnerability in payment processing systems: trust. By presenting seemingly legitimate businesses, the defendants manipulated credit card companies into becoming unwitting accomplices in a global black-market drug network. Their actions not only violated federal banking laws but also endangered American consumers who received unregulated, potentially dangerous medications with no oversight.
Sentencing is set for December: Khizgilov on December 8, 2020; Abrams on December 15, 2020; and Shaulov on December 17, 2020. Each faces a maximum of 30 years in prison and steep financial penalties. The case was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania, highlighting the reach of federal law enforcement into transnational financial crime networks masquerading as digital storefronts.
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Key Facts
- State: Pennsylvania
- Agency: DOJ USAO
- Category: Fraud & Financial Crimes|Drug Trafficking|Organized Crime
- Source: Official Source ↗
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