Indian businessman to be deported after months in custody

A businessman from India who admitted to smuggling prescription drugs into the U.S. through an Indian company was sentenced this week to time served and will be deported.

U.S. District Judge Mark Hornak imposed the sentence Tuesday on Jeetendra Harish Belani, 37, who had been in custody for more than a year. He was arrested in the Czech Republic in June 2019 and extradited to the U.S. to face prosecution in Pittsburgh following an investigation by the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Homeland Security and the international affairs office of the Justice Department.

He will next be deported to India. The judge also ordered him to forfeit $100,000.

Belani, an information technologist who ran a company called LeeHPL Ventures in India, had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to import drugs from India into the Pittsburgh region and elsewhere and laundering the proceeds with other conspirators in the U.S.

From 2015 to 2019, he illegally imported etizolam, modafinil, tapentadol, tramadol and carisoprodol to reshippers in the U.S. for distribution.

For etizolam, used for anxiety and insomnia, he sold the drug through the website www.etizy.com run by William Kulakevich, who lives in Alaska, and Julia Frees, a Florida resident. They paid him by wire transfers and virtual currency, prosecutors said.

Belani and the others used false customs declarations to hide the shipments. They also shipped in small quantities to avoid detection.

Kulakevich pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison last summer. Frees has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.