Authorities Bust Million-Dollar Crime Ring in Owings Mills

An Owings Mills man has been sentenced to three years in prison for conspiring to distribute $6.6 million in contraband cigarettes and for trafficking and distributing the painkiller oxycodone, along with other prescription drugs.

According to his guilty plea, 43-year-old Elmar Rakhamimov of Owings Mills was the leader and organizer of the contraband cigarettes scheme. Contraband cigarettes are cigarettes on which the applicable state taxes have not been paid.

Elmar Rakhamimov coordinated with two other men, Ilgar Rakhamimov (no relation) and Artur Zakharyan, to collect the money to purchase the contraband cigarettes, and to arrange for the storage and transportation of the contraband cigarettes to Brooklyn, New York. The three men purchased contraband cigarettes on 18 occasions between December of 2011 and November of 2013 from an undercover FBI agent operating in the Baltimore County area.

The cigarettes were reportedly stored at Rakhamimov's home in Owings Mills, where some were distributed in Maryland, and some were transported to Brooklyn, New York to be sold.

Authorities said the cigarettes were sold in quantities of 10,000 cigarettes or more, and bore no evidence of the payment of applicable state sales taxes. At the time of the indictment, the cigarette tax in Maryland was $2.00 per package of cigarettes ($20 per carton of cigarettes) and the cigarette tax in New York was $4.35 per package of cigarettes ($43.50 per carton of cigarettes). The total tax evaded over the course of the conspiracy was more than $2.5 million.

Rakhamimov and his cousin, Zarakh Yelizarov, laundered the proceeds of the contraband cigarette sales through an international money laundering operation that wired funds from banks located in Latvia, Cyprus, Estonia, and New York, to a bank in Maryland, disguising the money as legitimate business payments for medical equipment or supplies. From December 27, 2012 through September 5, 2013, Yelizarov and Rakhamimov wired a total of $649,500 through 12 transactions.

Rakhamimov also distributed Oxycodone, prescription drugs, counterfeit prescription drugs and other drugs as partial payment for contraband cigarettes and in exchange for cash. He conducted 15 drug transactions for which he reportedly received $356,123 in cash.

Additionally, on October 28, 2013, Rakhamimov sold 340 pills of Oxycodone and 1,000 pills of counterfeit Cialis to an individual who paid him $38,980 in cash.

Finally, the government presented evidence to the court that Rakhamimov was involved in the fencing of stolen jewelry from the violent robbery of an Owings Mills jewelry store, orchestrated by his nephew, Stanislav “Steven” Yelizarov.

After kidnapping a store employee, whose movements they had been monitoring, Yelizarov and his co-conspirators brandished firearms and forced the victim to provide the alarm codes for the jewelry store. Yelizarov and a co-conspirator, Grigoriy "Greg" Silberman, also of Owings Mills, stole jewelry worth approximately $500,000 from the store.

The next day, Rakhamimov told a confidential informant that he had a million dollars of “hot” jewelry to sell, and set up a meeting for January 18 at Rakhamimov’s home. The CI met Rakhamimov and Yelizarov, who were wearing gloves and had the stolen jewelry. The CI bought a selection of the stolen jewelry for $29,000.

For these crimes, Rakhamimov received a sentence of three years in prison followed by three years of supervised release. Two men from Reistertown who were also involved--Artur Zakharyan, 54, and Salim Yusufov, 43--were also given prison sentences. An additional man from Owings Mills--Nikolay Zakharyan, 25--was also sentenced to prison.

All conspirators were ordered to pay varying amounts in restitution. Rakhamimov, as the leader of the conspiracy, was ordered to pay $400,000.