3 from N. Y. admit to payment processing for illegal drug importation

Three residents of New York City have pleaded guilty in recent weeks in federal court in Pittsburgh to their roles in a conspiracy to import prescription drugs into the U. S. from China, Russia and India and processing of credit card payments associated with those sales to U. S. customers.

The U. S. attorney’s office said Devan Abrams, 39, of New York City; Azad Khizgilov, 46, of Staten Island; and Roman Shaulov, 53, of Brooklyn all pleaded guilty before U. S. District Judge David Cercone.

In related cases, Garri Shihman, 49 of Parkland, Fla., and Gennady Nudelman, 45, of Delray Beach, Fla., had also pleaded guilty and were sentenced in 2019.

Prosecutors said the conspiracy had two components. The first was the illegal sale online of drugs to U. S. consumers from various websites in China, Russia and India. The second was the processing of payment.

Abrams, Khizgilov, Shaulov, Shihman and Nudelman were all involved in the payment end.

Their activity between 2013 and 2017 involved a series of misrepresentations that caused credit card companies to process card transactions for the illegal drugs. Credit card companies have policies that preclude the use of their services to pay for illegally imported pharmaceuticals and they have internal controls designed to prevent their use for drug sales.

The defendants set up a series of front companies, fake websites and fraudulent merchant applications to defraud credit card companies into processing tens of millions of dollars in payments, the U. S. attorney’s office said. The front companies and fake websites falsely indicated that they were selling legitimate products.

All three men will be sentenced in December.