Indian gets 30-month prison term in US for customs duty evasion

Washington: An Indian man who ran jewellery companies in New York has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for evading customs duty for importing jewellery worth more than $13.5 million and for illegally processing over $10.3 million through an unlicensed money transmitting business, a US attorney said.

Acting US Attorney Vikas Khanna said Monishkumar Kirankumar Doshi Shah (4O) of Mumbai and Jersey City, New Jersey, previously pleaded guilty before US District Judge Esther Salas to a two-count information, charging him with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and operating and aiding and abetting the operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business.

In addition to the prison term, the judge ordered restitution in the amount of $742,500 for the wire fraud scheme and forfeiture of $11,126,982.33 for the wire fraud and unlicensed money transmitting schemes.

Additionally, the court imposed a two-year term of supervised release.

According to court documents, from around December 2019 to around April 2022, Shah engaged in a scheme to evade duties for shipments of jewellery from Turkey and India to the United States.

He would ship and/or instruct his co-conspirators to ship goods from Turkey or India — which would have been subject to an approximately 5.5 per cent duty if shipped directly to the United States — to one of his companies in South Korea.

Shah’s co-conspirators in South Korea would change the labels on the jewellery to state that they were from South Korea instead of Turkey or India, and then ship them to Shah or his customers in the United States, thereby unlawfully evading the duty, federal prosecutors said.

Shah would also instruct his customers to make fake invoices and packing lists to make it look like his South Korean companies were actually ordering jewellery from Turkey or India.

He also instructed a third-party shipping company to provide false information to US Customs and Border Protection about the origin of the jewellery. During the stated period, Shah shipped approximately $13.5 million of jewellery from South Korea to the United States without paying the appropriate duty.

Also from July 2020 to November 2021, Shah owned and/or operated numerous jewellery companies in New York City’s Diamond District, and used these firms to conduct more than 410.3 million illegal financial transactions for customers.

"Shah would also collect cash from customers and use other individuals’ jewellery companies to convert the cash into wires or checks. At times, Shah and other members of the money-transmitting business moved hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single day. In exchange for their services, certain members of the money transmitting business charged a fee," the court papers stated.