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This cookie is set by Youtube. Used by Google DoubleClick and stores information about how the user uses the website and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This cookie is used to a profile based on user's interest and display personalized ads to the users. Belkin says: "You didn't learn yet how to do it…. You've been in business for two years…. You have to speak the truth: 'I'm sorry.
I didn't know. You got all my money now. Take the taxes, take everything. Attorney Paul Gray, the lead prosecutor in the case, concedes that Moshe did not tell Belkin and Edelson the whole truth about the raids. Since this meant Belkin and Edelson would no longer pay by check, Sam Zhadanov decided to drop the job.
But Alex Srebrianski, a former Russian dissident whom Zhadanov employed as a plant manager, proposed leasing the necessary equipment from Vortex and taking on the job himself. He said he had become comfortable with Belkin and Edelson while overseeing production of the plastic containers, and he had no problem taking cash from them. Zhadanov agreed to this new arrangement, and on July 10, , he and Srebrianski signed a lease agreement for the equipment.
Alexander Trading Company. Since he did not have enough regular work to hire full-time employees, the Zhadanovs say, he continued using Vortex employees, and since he had trouble getting credit, he obtained his supplies through Vortex as well. He reimbursed Vortex for these expenses in cash. In September Pennsylvania drug agents found a scrap of paper outside a storage locker used by Belkin and Edelson.
On the paper was the logo of D-M-E, the company that had produced the molds that Vortex used to make the plastic containers. Drug Enforcement Administration, started to watch the factory. They knew that we didn't know. They never came to us…. When we asked an agent why they did this, he said, 'We wanted to find drugs. The Zhadanovs say they became suspicious when Belkin and Edelson started using transfer locations instead of picking the containers up at Vortex.
In late , the Zhadanovs asked Belkin and Edelson what was going on. This was the first time, the Zhadanovs say, that they learned the containers could be used for drugs. But they say Belkin and Edelson assured them that it was legal to make and sell the product. Indeed, a conversation recorded on October 23, , suggests that, despite Edelson's arrest, he and Belkin were confused about the meaning of state and federal paraphernalia laws. Roni Moshe's sister, Sigy, asks Belkin, "Is there a law against it?
He replies: "You know, with the law is. You coming from an interstate, you know, from one state to the next…. That's where they were coming, from Pennsylvania to New York back in Jersey. In any event, Sam Zhadanov assumed that he could not be held responsible for the ultimate use of a product made in his factory. Production continued until May , when Zhadanov observed a man in a car taking photographs of the factory.
When he told Belkin about the incident, Belkin said the man might be a police officer, or he might have been sent by a competing manufacturer. Alarmed, Zhadanov ordered a halt to production and consulted an attorney about the legality of the operation. After researching the relevant New Jersey statutes and case law, the attorney, Martin A. It is my opinion that the…containers that you showed me, together with the description of how they emanate from your building, should not make you liable….
First of all, you are not distributing, processing, or manufacturing the container. The person to whom you leased the molds and machinery is doing that.
Secondly, you have no knowledge of how these containers are being used. Meanwhile, Srebrianski tried unsuccessfully to set up his own factory and continue the operation there. In June , he approached Zhadanov about resuming production at Vortex. Reassured by the attorney's letter, Zhadanov agreed.
At this point, Belkin and Edelson changed the way the money was handled. Previously, one of their distributors would collect receipts from the stores and give the money to Belkin and Edelson, who would give Srebrianski his share; then Srebrianski would pay Vortex. Now Belkin and Edelson decided that the distributor should give the money directly to Srebrianski, who would divide it among himself, Vortex, and Belkin and Edelson. Production continued for nearly a year.
On the morning of May 19, , state and federal agents banged on the door of Sam and Anna Zhadanov's two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. When the Zhadanovs opened the door, the agents tackled Sam the government says he was "placed on the floor". And I am a small old man. They scared me so much, I was close to a heart attack. With guns, they come at 6 o'clock in the morning. Although they did not have a search warrant, the agents looked through the apartment, ostensibly doing a "security sweep," and discovered a safe in the bedroom.
Anna Zhadanov says one of the agents ordered her to open it the government says he simply "asked" her to do so. The safe contained several shoe boxes, which the agent asked her to open.
She refused and closed the safe. Eli Zhadanov notes that his parents come from a culture where there is nothing inherently suspicious about keeping large amounts of cash. The balance came from the cash payments that Vortex received from Srebrianski and from Belkin and Edelson over the course of two-and-a-half years.
Sam Zhadanov covered expenses for the Belkin and Edelson job with money from other customers that he deposited in Vortex's bank account. Zhadanov says he did not deposit the cash in the bank because he was afraid it would raise questions about the source, and Belkin and Edelson did not want to be named. Instead, he planned to spend the money on new equipment that he would need to make plastic Scrabble pieces for Milton Bradley.
The Zhadanovs have the prototype for the game pieces and price quotations for the equipment. Since he intended to reinvest the money in his business, he did not consider it unreported income. The IRS, of course, has a different view, though the agency chose not to bring criminal charges. The government argued that all of this property either represented the proceeds of illegal activity or helped facilitate illegal activity.
If drug dealers sold crack and used the proceeds to buy vials from retailers, who paid Belkin and Edelson, who paid Srebrianski, who then paid Vortex, this money then contaminated any bank accounts into which it was deposited.
Furthermore, all of the assets associated with Vortex can be said to have facilitated the production of the vials thereby facilitating the distribution of crack or to have helped launder the proceeds of illegal activity. Thus, in the government's view, everything the Zhadanovs had achieved was tainted by the order from Belkin and Edelson.
Indeed, in testimony before a federal grand jury in Philadelphia, a DEA agent suggested that Vortex had been established to serve the needs of crack dealers. As of the time of the interview, they were just ordering equipment in the early part of '91 through D-M-E Corporation. And it's our understanding that they were just getting started out then. Our impression is that they went into business for the purpose of manufacturing these vials because they knew they could make a lot of money doing it.
In fact, Vortex had been in business since and had been making items to order since ; its customers included Drexel University, Milton Bradley, Shenley Distillers, and Computer Insights.
During the period that Vortex was producing plastic containers for Belkin and Edelson, its main customer was the medical-supply company Becton-Dickinson, for which it made a safety syringe that Zhadanov had invented. After Zhadanov's arrest, federal agents began contacting his customers, informing them of the charges against him.
Becton-Dickinson terminated its relationship with Vortex. A deal with Hammacher Schlemmer, which had planned to carry Zhadanov's shower attachment, fell through. Zhadanov received an anxious letter from a Russian businessman who had ordered 10, shower attachments from Vortex. For now I will keep my obligations, but if they continue to harass me, I will have no alternative but to cancel the order.
The charges against Zhadanov were certainly alarming. The government estimated that Vortex produced more than million vials, each of which might ultimately contain at least half a gram of crack.
Hence Zhadanov was charged with participating in a conspiracy to distribute 10, kilograms of crack. He was also charged with 69 money-laundering counts, based mostly on the checks that he received from Belkin and Edelson and from Srebrianski, which he deposited in Vortex's bank account. Although this might seem like a pretty inept way to launder money, since it left a clear paper trail, the government argued that a financial transaction can be considered money laundering even when it could not realistically be expected to hide the proceeds of illegal activity.
Zhadanov was initially determined to go to trial, since he felt he had done nothing wrong. But under pressure from the prosecutors, who he feared might bring charges against his wife, and at the urging of his attorney, Peter Ginsberg, who said it was the best way to avoid a long prison term, Zhadanov signed a plea agreement in December He pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charges and to most of the money-laundering counts.
He agreed to give up all of his assets, except for half of the proceeds from the sale of the Vortex factory, which the government agreed to let his wife keep. As it turned out, this money was claimed by the IRS, which argues that Anna Zhadanov is liable for back taxes, interest, and penalties related to the Vortex money that the Zhadanovs had kept in the safe.
The prosecution agreed to certify that Zhadanov had been cooperative and was therefore eligible for a reduction in his sentence. Ginsberg says it was also understood that Anna Zhadanov would not face criminal charges.
The account contained money that belonged to several of Eli Zhadanov's business associates who had given it to him for safekeeping because of the political unrest in Russia. He planned to borrow the money to pay his father's legal fees. But the government claimed the account had been contaminated by money from vial sales.
The order freezing the money was entered on March 23, , and lifted two days later. Ginsberg says he persuaded the prosecutors that the freeze threatened Zhadanov's ability to retain legal counsel, and they agreed to split the money with him. Meanwhile, the prosecutors continued to play up Zhadanov's role in the case, arguing for a substantial prison sentence.
They insisted that he must have known he was making crack vials, and they portrayed him as eager for the work, although the record shows he resisted taking cash and repeatedly threatened to stop production. They said Zhadanov had not honestly sought legal advice to clarify his situation but had framed his inquiry in a way that underplayed his knowledge of how the containers were used. They dismissed his lease arrangement with Srebrianski, confirmed by Srebrianski's grand-jury testimony, as a charade designed to distance Zhadanov from production of the vials.
They asserted that Zhadanov was always in charge of setting prices and dividing the money. Gray says he doesn't recall where the cost estimate came from but that it was probably based on Vortex's records.
The probation officer who prepared the presentence investigation report accepted the prosecution's version of events. Nevertheless, he wrote that "the defendant is considered to have a minor role in the offense of conviction…. While the defendant may have held a managerial position within the vial making and distribution activity, his guidelines are predicated upon the distribution of cocaine base—an offense with which he is associated in only the most peripheral way.
As such, he is eligible for a significant role reduction, the greatest of which may not even appropriately address this role. In other words, the probation officer suggested that the lowest possible sentence under the guidelines was too high, since it was inappropriate to treat Zhadanov like a crack dealer.
Noting Zhadanov's impressive accomplishments, his impeccable record, and the punishment he had already suffered as a result of the arrest, the loss of his property, and the damage to his reputation, Ginsberg asked for a sentence of probation. In his statement just before sentencing, Zhadanov tried to explain where he had gone wrong: "If somebody come to me and say, make this…. I make it. I don't care what this product used for. And this was my mistake. Because I have to care.
I never knew what this means, conspiracy. Now I know. Then he appealed to U. District Judge Thomas N. And I started work.
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