David Nahmad (third from left) in the company of friends at the Ferrari Celebrates Art Basel in Miami Beach circa 2011.
In the United States, Hillel Nahmad, who ran a high-stakes gambling operation, was one of the primary directors of the group. The organization operated a “high-stakes illegal gambling business run out of New York City and Los Angeles that catered primarily to multimillionaire and billionaire clients,” according to the indictment. According to the indictment, the organization would enforce payment of gambling debts through threat and force. For example, the organization acquired a 50 percent interest in Titan P&H plumbing company in the Bronx as repayment for a $2 million gambling debt.

“I know almost nothing” about the raid, commented Hillel Nahmad’s father David from London. He added, “I think it’s totally stupid” when told about the government’s allegations that his son was connected with Russian organized crime.

The government is attempting to effect the forfeiture of four luxury properties, including an apartment at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue and two Miami estates, in connection with the case.

The indictment outlines several money laundering schemes, including an attempt by a branch manager at a JPMorgan Chase bank in Manhattan to structure transactions in a fashion that would not generate currency transaction reports.

In addition to the millions that flowed illegally between banks in the United States and Cyprus, the indictment charges that several co-conspirators laundered money through an automobile repair shop in Brooklyn, a real estate company in New York and a company that sold used cars online.

In a 2007 profile of the Nahmad family, Forbes magazine described in detail how they are one of the most powerful megadealers of modern and impressionist art, including such masters as Monet, Matisse and Renoir. While the majority of their art deals are performed through the famed Sotheby’s and Christie’s auction houses, the Nahmad family sells a significant amount of art through Helly’s New York gallery and a cousin’s gallery in London.

The original patriarch of the Nahmad family was a wealthy banker from Aleppo, Syria. The family’s current art inventory fills up 15,000 square feet of a building in Geneva, Switzerland, which houses close to 5,000 pieces of art worth in total anywhere from $3 to $4 billion. Notably, the inventory includes 300 classic works by Picasso, estimated in value at $900 million.

“Today’s charges demonstrate the scope and reach of Russian organized crime,” declared George Venizelos, the FBI’s Assistant Director-in-Charge of the bureau’s New York office. “Crime pays only until you are arrested and prosecuted.”