Golden Beach man loses freedom and his mansion in huge scam involving baby formula
A 7,700-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-bathroom house and three units of an Aventura office building are the list of losses for a Golden Beach man after a massive commercial fraud that involved infant formula, eye-care products and other products regulated by the FDA.
Johnny Grobman, 48, won’t need the home for the 11⁄2 decades: He’ll be serving at least 85% of an 18-year, four-month sentence handed down Friday in U.S. District Court in Miami after his conviction on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud; wire fraud; money laundering; conspiring to obtain preretail medical products worth $5,000 or more by fraud or deception; theft of pre-retail medical products; and smuggling goods from the United States.
Two of his associates, Fort Lauderdale husband and wife, Raoul Doekhie, 53, and Sherida Nabi, 57, were convicted of the same charges and received the same sentences.
They also were hit with forfeiture judgments for money and property gained from their criminal activities. Grobman was tagged for $87,187,374 and Doekhie and Nabi for $115,699,273.
As part of satisfying that forfeiture, court documents, Grobman must give up everything in accounts for companies J Trading and Nutrisource and accounts with Bank of America, UBS Financial Services and Merrill Lynch held with “N.G.”
“N.G.” is likely Noemi Geller, the name on the state registry for Vera Investment Properties, which owns unit Nos. 710-712 at One Aventura, an office building at 20900 NE 30th Ave.
Also lost to forfeiture is the aforementioned home at 100 Golden Beach Dr. that Miami-Dade County property records say Grobman and Geller bought for $5,282,500 in 2013. The lot is 25,663 square feet.
Doekhie and Nabi will lose everything in the Regions Bank account for Tropical Marketing and Distribution of Suriname; everything in their joint Bank of America account; and the three-bedroom, two-bathroom unit No. 3207 in Las Olas By the River condos, 520 SE Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale.
The Fort Lauderdale couple is from Suriname and, at trial, prosecutors proved the trio worked a scam from 2013 to 2018 based on the lie that they had government procurement contracts in Suriname. U.S. manufacturers of infant formula and other products sold them to the trio at a reduced rate.
But the three people simply took the products and resold them in the United States for a profit. Meanwhile, they faked shipments to Suriname in a number of ways, including shipping the products to create export documentation, then immediately shipping them back without the products ever touching land. Sometimes they simply faked the export documentation.