Carlos Djemal Nehmad, a Mexican businessman, was sentenced to 75 months in prison for orchestrating a scheme to fraudulently obtain over $20 million in tax refunds from the government of Mexico.
According to the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey S. Berman, Nehmad created an international network of shell companies in the United States and Mexico to defraud the Mexican government of millions of dollars.
The scheme involved creating the appearance of legitimate business activity through the transfer of over $100 million through dozens of shell companies in the United States and Mexico.
Nehmad caused Front Companies in Mexico to purchase outdated cellular phones from other companies seeking to sell outdated inventory, and then caused these phones to be exported to Front Companies in the United States owned and operated by others that he recruited to the scheme.
Once the phones were shipped to the United States, they were transferred to one or more Front Companies in the United States only to be shipped back to a different Front Company in Mexico, enabling Nehmad to obtain multiple fraudulent VAT refunds for the same phones.
Nehmad was ordered to forfeit cash, artwork, and his shareholdings of Investabank, a Mexican bank in which he was part owner, in addition to his prison sentence.
He was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit and pay restitution in the amount of $21 million.
The scheme lasted from approximately June 2011 to approximately May 2016, during which time Nehmad and his co-conspirators moved more than $100 million through dozens of accounts maintained by Front Companies.
Key Facts
- State: New York
- Category: Fraud & Financial Crimes
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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