Do you want your sofa back? Pay up, said movers running a ransom scheme

Every New Yorker who has ever moved has experienced the passing anxiety of packing all their belongings into a moving van, sweating out the precarious hours between one apartment and the next, calling neither home.

Federal prosecutors say a group of scammers cashed in on that nervous moment, duping hundreds of trusting customers by offering cheap moving quotes and then demanding exorbitant fees in exchange for giving back their worldly possessions.

The scheme, orchestrated by the now-fugitive owner of several Brooklyn moving companies, resulted in guilty verdicts Monday for two mid-level employees, Kristy Mak and Andre Prince, each on a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The case was brought by Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

Ms Mak, 34, and Mr Prince, 45, were both employed by the main defendant, Yakov Moroz, who took his dedication to the extreme this year by absconding while out on bail.

Mr. Moroz’s companies defrauded more than 800 victims between 2017 and 2020, bilking more than $3 million, prosecutors said.

Mr. Moroz used aliases and repeatedly restarted his businesses, confusing customers — not to mention employees, who sometimes answered the phone with the wrong company name, according to testimony. That reinvention, officials said, helped as news of the infamous practices spread.

“Once the reviews became too difficult to process, they simply changed their names,” prosecutor Arun Bodapati said in his closing arguments on Monday.

Ms. Mak was the Florida-based sales manager for several of Mr. Moroz’s ventures, including the ambitiously named Great Moving USA, while Mr. Prince — who also used aliases — was a sales representative. Two other suspects pleaded guilty in November.

The plan was simple and sinister: the companies would advertise cheap services, often backed by fake websites that called them “trusted interstate movers.”

Then, after the contract was signed — and sometimes after the couches, china and tchotchkes were on trucks — prosecutors said Mr. Moroz’s companies would increase the surprise charges, with drivers threatening to hold the items hostage until customers paid, sometimes double or even triple the estimate.

Some customers also faced threats that their belongings would be auctioned if the ransom for the furniture was not paid. Even after that, prosecutors said, the return of the goods was often delayed by weeks or months, and sometimes the goods turned out to be damaged.

Ms. Mak assisted with day-to-day operations and handled customer service, while Mr. Prince was in charge of pitching potential clients, often charming them, according to testimonials from some of those now less charmed clients during the weeklong trial period.

Rogue movers are not uncommon: the federal transportation department’s Office of Inspector General has a most sought after siteincluding some considered fugitives “armed and dangerous.” In February, a suspect convicted in a similar scheme was convicted an 18-month prison sentence in the Eastern District.

Federal authorities say yes breaking downdispatching dozens of investigators earlier this year “to address the significant increase in complaints of movers holding household belongings hostage to extort exorbitant additional fees from consumers.”

Mr Moroz, who was previously under investigation for shady moving companies, is said to have done that fled to Israelaccording to the Daily News.

During the trial, lawyers had tried to suggest that Mr. Prince and Ms. Mak were simply doing their jobs, including reading scripts to customers and passing on preset prices.

“Andre was a cog,” Carlos M. Santiago, Mr. Prince’s lawyer, said during his summons on Monday. “Nothing more and nothing less.”

But the idea that Mr Prince and Ms Mak were unaware of the scam was seemingly undermined by electronic messages in which Ms Mak laughed – “lol,” she wrote – at the idea of ​​extorting more money from customers at their destination . Prosecutors also introduced a meme sent to Mr. Prince by another salesperson showing a dog hiding behind curtains, with the caption “I’m hiding from the customer on moving day.”

“That is so accurate,” Mr. Prince responded with a laughing emoji.

Jeffrey Pittell, Ms. Mak’s lawyer, also suggested Monday that surprise fees are simply part of modern existence, noting his own recent dismay over the high surcharge to buy tickets to a Rolling Stones show.

“It’s just part of life,” Mr. Pittell said.

Ultimately, however, the federal jury took less than three hours to deliver the verdicts.

The defendants will be sentenced in April and each face a prison sentence of up to 20 years. Both Mr Pittell and Mr Santiago declined to comment after the verdicts were announced.

In a statement, Mr. Peace called the relocation plan “despicable,” saying it targeted victims “when they were at their most vulnerable and at the mercy of corrupt movers who held their worldly possessions hostage.”