Damian Williams, the USA Lawyer for the Southern District of New York, introduced that DJONIBEK RAHMANKULOV was sentenced in the present day to 121 months in jail for laundering hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in legal proceeds obtained from laptop hacking, healthcare fraud, and Small Enterprise Administration mortgage fraud, in addition to working a global unlicensed cash transmitting enterprise. The defendant was convicted at trial on September 1, 2022, of cash laundering conspiracy, financial institution fraud, and conspiracy to function an unlicensed cash transmitting enterprise. U.S. District Decide Ronnie Abrams imposed in the present day’s sentence.
U.S. Lawyer Damian Williams stated: “Djonibek Rahmankulov laundered cash for a residing. He exploited the monetary system to launder hundreds of thousands of {dollars} from a number of fraudulent schemes and repeatedly lied to banks to function his unlawful enterprise. As soon as caught — and even after he was convicted — the defendant continued to point out that he believed he was above the legislation by threatening a witness and submitting false data to the Court docket. Right now’s sentence displays that this Workplace will discover and prosecute those that search to abuse the U.S. monetary system to launder soiled cash.”
In keeping with the superseding Indictment, proof at trial, and statements made in Court docket:
Between 2017 and September 2020, RAHMANKULOV operated a community of shell corporations that had been used to launder hundreds of thousands of {dollars} of legal proceeds from a number of varieties of legal exercise. RAHMANKULOV labored with laptop hackers who fraudulently gained management of the financial institution accounts of victims situated all through the USA and executed hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in fraudulent wire transfers into financial institution accounts opened by RAHMANKULOV and his co-conspirators. RAHMANKULOV acquired wire transfers into financial institution accounts he created and financial institution accounts he instructed others to create and laundered these proceeds by means of a number of extra financial institution accounts to stop the victims and the banks from recovering the stolen funds.
As well as, RAHMANKULOV labored with a community of pharmacies engaged in Medicare and Medicaid fraud. These pharmacies submitted hundreds of thousands of {dollars} of fraudulent billing for HIV medicines that they didn’t dispense or obtained illegally, together with by repurchasing medicines from HIV sufferers who had been Medicaid recipients. RAHMANKULOV created corporations to obtain these legal proceeds from the pharmacies and laundered them by means of a wide range of means, together with by utilizing them to fund an unlicensed cash transmitting enterprise that illegally moved cash to and from a number of international locations, together with Iran.
In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic started, RAHMANKULOV filed fraudulent functions for COVID aid loans from the Small Enterprise Administration for a number of corporations he managed. He laundered the proceeds of loans and grants by means of these corporations. RAHMANKULOV additionally made quite a lot of materially false statements to monetary establishments in connection together with his cash laundering schemes, each when opening financial institution accounts and when executing monetary transactions with these financial institution accounts.
RAHMANKULOV sought to impede justice in the course of the pendency of his case. Within the months earlier than trial, RAHMANKULOV instructed a witness to mislead legislation enforcement. When the witness later knowledgeable RAHMANKULOV that the witness would inform the reality to legislation enforcement, RAHMANKULOV threatened the witness, stating, amongst different issues, that if he went to jail, “I’ll drag all of you with me, and as soon as you’re there, then I’ll have my revenge.” Nonetheless, the witness testified at trial. RAHMANKULOV continued in search of to impede justice after his conviction. Upfront of his sentencing, he submitted a number of letters to the Court docket purporting to point out assist from members of the group, however two of those letters had been in reality fraudulent and had not been written by the purported authors.
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Along with the jail time period, RAHMANKULOV, 35, of Queens, New York, was sentenced to 3 years of supervised launch. RAHMANKULOV was additional ordered to pay a forfeiture of $5,413,278 and a $40,000 effective.
Mr. Williams praised the excellent investigative work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s New York Cash Laundering Investigation Squad.
The prosecution is being dealt with by the Workplace’s Cash Laundering and Transnational Felony Enterprises Unit. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Cecilia Vogel, Thane Rehn, and Samuel Raymond, with the help of Paralegal Specialist Nerlande Pierre, are answerable for the prosecution.