US
Indicts Reputed Russian Mobster In Magnet Co Case
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
PHILADELPHIA (AP)--A reputed Russian mob boss was
the brain behind a Pennsylvania industrial-magnet company that
fleeced investors of at least $150 million, federal prosecutors said
in an indictment unsealed Thursday.
Semion , 56, and three alleged lieutenants are
accused of concocting a complex scheme to make it appear as if YBM
Magnex International, a Newtown, Pennsylvania, firm with a single
factory in Hungary, was a major corporation with huge profits.
In just four years, YBM saw its stock soar from 10
cents a share to around $14 a share on Canadian stock exchanges
before officials halted trading in 1998.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan said the company was
no more than "a well disguised illusion," worth a fraction
of the value it claimed in financial reports.
"Books were cooked. Auditors were deceived.
Bribes were paid to accountants," Meehan said.
This morning FBI agents arrested YBM's former chief
executive, Jacob Bogatin, at his home in Richboro, an affluent
suburb of Philadelphia.
Mogilevich could be
harder to find. A native of Ukraine, he holds citizenship in Israel,
Hungary and Russia and his exact whereabouts are unknown,
investigators said.
He was last believed to be living in Moscow, said
FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Lampinski, head of the bureau's
Philadelphia field office.
Russia does not have an extradition treaty with the
United States, and there is no guarantee that authorities there
would arrest Mogilevich at the FBI's
request, although they have promised to help locate him, Lampinski
said.
The 45-count indictment, filed in Philadelphia,
charges Mogilevich , Bogatin and
partners Igor Fisherman and Anatoly Tsoura with racketeering, money
laundering, falsification of books and records, and a number of
wire, mail and securities frauds.
Investigators said they are unsure of the
whereabouts of Tsoura and Fishman. Bogatin was being held at a
federal jail pending a bail hearing on Monday. His attorney, Eric W.
Sitarchuk, said his client did not wish to comment on his arrest or
the charges against him.
It is the first time Mogilevich
has been charged with a crime in the United States. For years he has
complained to European newspapers that he is a legitimate
businessman being set up by the FBI.
