NY POST
3 GEM MEN BUSTED OVER DRUG BUCKS
By CARL CAMPANILE and BILL SANDERSON
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August 20, 2004 -- .
Three Diamond District businessmen were busted yesterday on charges of laundering $1.5 million in South American drug money.
The suspects — two of whom worked out of a West 47th Street office building — collected cash from drug dealers and, in return, wrote them checks ranging from $10,000 to $100,000, according to an indictment handed up by a federal grand jury.
Those who ultimately received the checks were able to deposit them in bank accounts from which the funds could be wired to Venezuela or Colombia, authorities said.
The suspects kept a 6 percent fee, or "vig," for themselves and tried to cover their tracks by writing bogus invoices saying they'd collected the money in jewelry sales, the indictment says.
Charged were Ebrahim Raphael and Hamid Delshad and their business, Princess Gold Manufacturers Inc.; and Yitzhak Hirschfeld and his business, Intense & Vivid Inc.
The door was locked at Princess Gold's office on West 47th Street, and an employee said no one was available to speak.
Intense & Vivid's offices could not be located.
The three posted $250,000 bonds with their properties as collateral — including Hirschfeld's home in Monsey, N.Y., where he'd been arrested yesterday.
In May, accused money launderer Eduard Nektalov, 46, was shot dead on Sixth Avenue near the Diamond District.
The slaying is unsolved, but authorities said it apparently had nothing to do with yesterday's arrests.
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