A Greek man has been sentenced in a US court to eight years and five months in jail for his part in a multimillion dollar scam involving bogus letters of credit (L/Cs).

The scam defrauded developers of US$7.9 million and included a fictitious bank.

Convictions and sentence

Evripedes Georgiadis was convicted last May of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, 11 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

As well as handing down a prison sentence, the judge in a Boston court also ordered Georgiadis to pay US$8.4 million in restitution.

Co-conspiritors

According to investigators, between 2007 and 2011, Georgiadis purported to represent a multi-billion US dollar Luxembourg-based fund.

He and his Florida-based co-conspiratorsJohn Condo, Michael Zanetti, andFrank Barecich, convinced developers to deposit money in the fake BBDA Global Investment Fund and promised to pay for large-scale property developments.

Fictitious bank

To reassure the developers, the conspirators forged fake L/Cs from a fictitious bank, ostensibly based in New Zealand.

However, they subsequently transferred the money out of the US into accounts controlled by them.

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