Некъф техен човек ги бил обадил ...

Transcontinental crime ring broken up, Pinellas authorities say

By Kameel Stanley, Times Staff Writer

Published Friday, March 16, 2012

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LARGO — Tihomir Botchev told his neighbors he was a contractor.
But
authorities say the 32-year-old, originally from Bulgaria, actually
made his money by running a transcontinental crime ring that defrauded
several financial institutions out of at least $3.1 million over the
past four years.
The operation involved using fake documents to
get credit cards and luxury vehicles, which were then resold overseas
for sometimes double the value, Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri announced
Friday morning.
Authorities raided Botchev's Largo home off West
Bay Drive on Thursday and arrested him and four other men on
racketeering and conspiracy charges. A judge set bail for each of them
at $500,000.
The investigation, which began in 2008, is a joint
operation of the sheriff's economic crimes unit, the U.S. Secret Service
and the Florida attorney general's statewide prosecution office. It is
ongoing.
"This is one of the largest investigations we've had in
the Tampa Bay area," said John Joyce, special agent in charge of the
Secret Service's Tampa office. "Certainly the most organized. … The
scheme itself is the most involved we've come across."
Authorities
are still looking for five other men they consider to be main players
in the crime ring, although Gualtieri said hundreds of others may have
participated in the scheme over the years.
At a news conference
Friday morning, Gualtieri and Joyce used giant diagrams to explain how
the crime ring worked. They said the group used three main schemes:
•
Recruits would be given fake documents to get credit cards, which they
would then max out on purchases from various shell companies in Florida
and Illinois linked to Botchev. Botchev would then withdraw cash from
the shell companies' accounts. Banks would never be paid. Officials
estimated the ring got about $1 million this way.
• Suspects used
fake documents to get car loans for new BMWs, Audis, Infinitis and
other luxury vehicles bought in Florida, and then they registered them
in Illinois, which had looser rules when it came to proving
satisfactions of liens. The crime ring would then ship the cars overseas
to places such as Lithuania, resell them and never repay the bank
loans.
• Using cash from the credit card scheme, suspects also
would use fake documents to buy used cars from local dealers and then
get fake loans for those same cars from banks. Meanwhile, the ring would
ship the used cars overseas, resell them and never repay the banks.
Officials estimate the ring got about $2.1 million from both of the
vehicle schemes.
The group duped more than a dozen financial
institutions, including Chase, Fifth Third Bank, Bank of America,
BB&T and Grow Financial, among others, officials said.
In
addition to Botchev, those arrested Thursday included Ivan Petrov, 31,
Georgi Angelov, 28, and Martin Jordanov, 27, all of St. Petersburg, and
Lubomir Sandov, 47, of Clearwater.
Authorities are still looking
for these men: Ivan Staykov, Kiril G. Dinev and Ivaylo V. Georgiev
(a.k.a. Rumen Naydenov), all of Chicago; and Nikolay Poibrenski and
Atanas Todorov Zagorov, who are believed to be local.
Detectives
said someone from inside the organization tipped off authorities to what
was going on. But it took authorities years to put the case together.
Officials in Florida and Illinois have already made changes as a result of this investigation, Gualtieri said.
He
said Illinois has tightened its policy regarding showing proof of loan
satisfaction, and several of the financial institutions involved are
requiring physical inspections of cars before they issue a loan.
All
of the people involved in the scheme are from Bulgaria or other eastern
European countries, officials said. Some, including Botchev, entered
the United States legally, then became citizens.
Botchev himself
moved to this country a dozen years ago, sheriff's spokeswoman Cecilia
Barreda said. He lived in both Chicago and Florida. Authorities said
they believe he met the others involved in the scheme through social
situations.
No one answered the door Friday at Botchev's
one-story, coffee-colored home on Keating Drive. Neighbors said he has a
wife and children. A St. Patrick's Day-themed welcome sign was stuck in
the lawn.
Reach Kameel Stanley at tampabay.com or (727) 893-8643.

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