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MANHATTAN---A married couple and their son has been indicted on charges of operating an illegal check cashing and money transmittal business. The company through which they conducted business has also been indicted. In a four year period, a total of $25 million flowed through the company’s bank accounts, including four million dollars from illegally cashed checks, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.
The defendants are Vadim Vassilenko, 39, Yelena Barysheva, 40, and their son, Alexey Baryshev, 21. They are the owners of Western Express International Inc., an unlicensed check cashing and money transmittal business located at 555 Eighth Avenue (at 38th Street) in midtown-Manhattan. Prosecutors said that Alexey Baryshev is a fugitive.
The investigation leading to the indictment revealed that the defendants, doing business as Western Express allegedly illegally transmitted money and cashed checks on behalf of clients located in Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, in violation of New York State banking regulations. Western Express was not licensed either as a money transmitter or a check casher. From 2002 to 2005, over $25 million allegedly flowed through the business’s bank accounts, representing the proceeds of the defendants’ and their clients’ illegal activities.
Through its websites, Western Express advertised one-stop shopping to enable persons in Eastern Europe to conduct business in the United States. As the defendants knew, the clients that Western Express attracted used fictitious identities, often multiple identities, to conduct their business in the U.S. Western Express performed various services for their clients, in addition to transmitting money and cashing checks: they exchanged digital currency (such as E-Gold and WebMoney), provided clients with stored value gift cards, ATM cards and U.S. Taxpayer Identification Numbers, and rented U.S. addresses for their clients to use as mail drops. The investigation has revealed that their clients were involved in widespread illegality beyond the mere receipt of funds under fictitious aliases and addresses, including a variety of cyber-crimes such as “re-shipping” schemes and “phishing,” “spoofing” and spamming.
“Virtually every service offered by these defendants and their business was illegal or helped other people profit from illegal activities”, DA Robert Morgenthau said. “As a result of these criminal activities, millions of dollars were transferred illegally out of the United States, evading regulations that exist to safeguard our monetary system from being used as a conduit for criminal proceeds.”
Last week, search warrants were executed at seven locations in New York City, upstate New York and New Jersey Over $100,000 in cash was recovered from the defendants' residence in Ft. Lee, N.J., as well as thousands of stored value gift cards from various locations.
The one-year investigation began as an inquiry into a report of identity theft. An upstate New York woman reported that her credit card account number had been used to make fraudulent purchases of electronics over the Internet. Investigation showed that numerous other individuals were victims of the same identity theft scam. The items purchased with these stolen credit card numbers were eventually re-sold through the Internet in exchange for E-Gold, a digital currency. Further investigation revealed that the E-Gold obtained by the identity thieves was ultimately funneled through Western Express.
The indictment charges the defendants with violating the State Banking Law, which makes it a class “E” felony to engage in the business of transmitting money without a license if one knowingly transmits $250,000 or more in a period of one year or less. In addition, the defendants are charged with violating the State Banking Law by engaging in the business of cashing checks without a license. The indictment encompasses illegal money transmitting and check cashing activity from the years 2002 through 2005.
The defendants are also charged with falsifying business records in the first degree, a class E felony, for allegedly supplying false information to Commerce Bank and Citibank at the time they opened accounts with those institutions. In those documents, the married couple allegedly falsely reported to the banks that they were in businesses other than check cashing and money transmitting; for example, in one case, the defendants claimed that Western Express was in the “retail business” and, in another case, the defendants claimed that they were involved in computer programming. 2-24-06
© 2005 North
Country Gazette
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