A New Jersey jeweler has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for orchestrating a multimillion-dollar international trade fraud scheme and operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business. Monishkumar Kirankumar Doshi Shah, 40, of Mumbai, India, and Jersey City, NJ, was sentenced in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business.
The investigation, led by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Newark, spanned multiple countries, including India, South Korea, New York, and New Jersey.
It revealed that Shah, who operated jewelry companies in New York City’s Diamond District, evaded customs duties on over $13.5 million worth of jewelry imports and illegally processed more than $10.3 million through his unlicensed money-transmitting operation.
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“Monishkumar Kirankumar Doshi Shah disregarded our nation’s trade laws and defrauded the U.S. government of millions of dollars in customs duties through his brazen international financial fraud scheme,” said Spiros Karabinas, acting Special Agent in Charge of HSI Newark. “Through HSI’s investigation, we were able to uncover the mislabeled tracks of jewelry shipments and illegal transactions Shah hoped to conceal. We are thankful for the collaboration with partners across the globe who helped us bring this case to successful prosecution.”
From approximately December 2019 to April 2022, Shah devised a scheme to avoid paying approximately 5.5% duty on jewelry shipments from Turkey and India. He shipped, or instructed co-conspirators to ship, the jewelry to his companies in South Korea.
There, the labels were altered to falsely indicate South Korea as the origin, and the goods were then shipped to Shah or his US customers, thus illegally evading the duty. Shah and his co-conspirators also created fraudulent invoices and packing lists to support the false origin claims. He further instructed a shipping company to provide false information to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
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Between July 2020 and November 2021, Shah operated several jewelry businesses in New York City’s Diamond District, including MKore LLC, MKore USA Inc, and Vruman Corp. He used these entities to conduct over $10.3 million in illegal financial transactions, including cash-to-check and cash-to-wire conversions, for customers.
He also accepted cash from customers and utilized other individuals’ jewelry companies to facilitate the transactions. These illegal money-transmitting services involved substantial sums of money, sometimes reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single day, for which Shah and his associates charged a fee. None of the involved companies were registered as money-transmitting businesses.
In addition to the 30-month prison sentence, Judge Salas ordered Shah to pay $742,500 in restitution for the wire fraud scheme and forfeit $11,126,982.33 for the wire fraud and unlicensed money transmitting schemes. He was also sentenced to two years of supervised release following his prison term.
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