Grimy Times has learned that a Bulgarian national has pleaded guilty to his role in laundering money for a transnational criminal group based in Eastern Europe.
According to court documents, Georgi Boychev Georgiev, 43, a resident of Bulgaria, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia on January 9, 2008.
Georgiev was extradited from Poland to the United States in December 2009. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison at sentencing, scheduled for July 23, 2010.
The scheme, which operated from July 2005 through November 2006, involved the posting of fraudulent advertisements on eBay and other web sites offering expensive vehicles and boats for sale that the conspirators did not possess.
When the U.S. victims expressed interest in the merchandise, they were contacted directly by an e-mail from a purported seller. The victims were then instructed to wire transfer payments through “eBay Secure Traders”—an entity which has no actual affiliation to eBay but was used as a ruse to persuade the victims that they were sending money into a secure escrow account pending delivery and inspection of their purchases.
Instead, the victims’ funds were wired directly into bank accounts in Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland that were controlled by co-conspirators. The scheme netted more than $1.4 million from U.S. victims in less than one year.
The U.S. continues to work with foreign counterparts in Romania and Poland regarding the remaining defendants. Ivaylo Vasilev Pletnyov and Nikolay Georgiev Minchev, two of the original defendants, have already been sentenced to four years and 30 months in prison, respectively, for their roles in the money laundering conspiracy.
The case was investigated by the FBI – Hungarian National Bureau of Investigation (HNBI) Organized Crime Task Force located in Budapest, Hungary (Budapest Task Force). The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Lisa Page of the Criminal Division’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Section.
Related Federal Cases
- Teresita B. Mutton, Money Laundering, District of Columbia 2023 · District of Columbia
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Key Facts
- State: District of Columbia
- Category: Public Corruption|White Collar Crime|Organized Crime
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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