Indian jeweller booked in the US for multimillion-dollar international trade fraud scheme

Monishkumar Kirankumar Doshi Shah, a 39-year-old jeweller operating between Mumbai and New Jersey, has been apprehended for alleged involvement in a sophisticated scheme to evade customs duties on jewellery imports into the United States and for running unlicensed money-transmitting businesses. The announcement came from a US attorney who revealed the details of Shah's arrest and subsequent legal proceedings.

Shah, also known as "Monish Doshi Shah," was taken into custody over the weekend and made his initial appearance on February 26 before US Magistrate Judge André M Espinosa in Newark federal court. Despite the gravity of the charges against him, Shah was granted release on a bond of USD 100,000, with strict conditions including home detention and location monitoring.

According to court documents, Shah stands accused of orchestrating a complex conspiracy spanning from January 2015 to September 2023 aimed at evading customs duties for shipments of jewellery from Turkey and India to the United States. The modus operandi allegedly involved routing the shipments through one of Shah's companies in South Korea, where the labels on the jewellery were tampered with to falsely indicate their origin as South Korea, thereby circumventing the duties that would have been levied on imports from Turkey or India.

Federal prosecutors further allege that Shah, during the course of this scheme, facilitated the transfer of millions of dollars' worth of jewellery from South Korea to the United States. Moreover, from July 2020 to November 2021, Shah purportedly operated multiple jewellery companies in New York City's renowned Diamond District, conducting extensive illegal financial transactions amounting to millions of dollars.

These illicit financial activities included converting cash into checks or wire transfers for customers, as well as collecting cash from clients and using accomplices' jewellery companies in the Diamond District to convert the cash into wires or checks. Shockingly, court documents reveal instances where Shah and his associates moved more than a million dollars of cash in a single day.

Perhaps most damningly, none of Shah's companies, nor those of his associates, were registered as money-transmitting businesses with the relevant authorities, including New York, New Jersey, or the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

The charges against Shah are grave, with the wire fraud conspiracy charge carrying a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, and the charge of operating an illegal money-transmitting business punishable by up to five years in prison. Each count also carries a substantial fine, potentially amounting to $250,000 or twice the gain or loss from the offence, whichever is greater.