When movers hold your sofa for a ransom

Anyone who has ever moved has experienced the transient terror of putting all of one’s belongings into a moving truck, sweating out the precarious hours poised between one apartment and another, calling neither home.

Federal prosecutors in the United States say a group of scammers made money off that nervous moment, bilking hundreds of trusting customers by offering cheap moving estimates and then demanding exorbitant fees in exchange for returning their worldly possessions.

The scheme, orchestrated by the now-fugitive owner of several Brooklyn moving companies, resulted in guilty verdicts earlier in December for two mid-level employees, Kristy Mak and Andre Prince, each on a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Mak, 34, and Prince, 45, were both employed by the lead defendant, Yakov Moroz, who in 2023 took his devotion to moving to extremes by absconding while free on bond.

Moroz’s companies swindled more than 800 victims between 2017 and 2020, taking in more than US$3 million (S$4 million), prosecutors said.

Moroz used aliases and repeatedly rebooted his businesses, confusing customers – not to mention employees, who sometimes answered the phones using the wrong company name, according to testimony. That reinvention, officials said, helped as word of the disreputable practices spread.

“Once the reviews became too hard to handle, they’d simply change their name,” said Mr Arun Bodapati, a prosecutor.

Mak was the Florida-based sales manager for several of Moroz’s ventures, including the aspirationally named Great Moving USA, while Prince – who also used aliases – was a sales representative.

The scheme was simple and sinister: The companies would advertise cheap services, often buoyed by fake websites referring to them as “trusted interstate movers”.

Then, after the contract was signed – and sometimes after the couches, china and tchotchkes were on trucks – Moroz’s companies would spring the surprise fees, with drivers threatening to hold the items until customers paid up, sometimes double or even triple the estimate, said prosecutors.

Some customers were also met with threats that their belongings would be auctioned if the furniture ransom weren’t paid. Even after that, prosecutors said, the return of the goods was often delayed by weeks or months, and sometimes items showed up damaged.

Mak assisted with day-to-day operations and did customer service, while Prince was in charge of pitching potential customers, often charming them, according to testimony from several of those now-less-charmed customers.

Rogue movers aren’t uncommon: The federal Transportation Department’s Office of Inspector General has a most-wanted site, which includes some fugitives considered “armed and dangerous”. In February, a defendant convicted in a similar scheme was given an 18-month prison sentence.

The federal authorities say they have been cracking down, sending dozens of investigators out earlier this year “to address the significant uptick in complaints of movers holding household possessions hostage to extort exorbitant additional charges from consumers”.

Moroz, who had been under investigation for shady moving businesses before, is reported to have fled to Israel.

In the trial, defence attorneys had tried to suggest that Prince and Mak were just doing their jobs, including reading scripts to customers and passing along preset prices.

“Andre was a cog,” said Mr Carlos M. Santiago, Prince’s lawyer. “Nothing more and nothing less.”

But the idea that Prince and Mak were oblivious to the scam was seemingly undercut by electronic messages that showed Mak laughing – “lol”, she wrote – at the idea of extorting more money from customers at their destinations. Prosecutors also introduced a meme sent to Prince by another salesperson showing a dog hiding behind drapes, with the caption “me hiding from the customer on move day”.

“That is so accurate,” Prince responded, with a laughing emoji.

Mr Jeffrey Pittell, Mak’s lawyer, also suggested that surprising fees were simply part of modern existence, noting his own recent displeasure at a hefty surcharge to buy tickets for a Rolling Stones show.

“It’s just part of life,” Mr Pittell said.

In the end, however, the federal jury took less than three hours to return the verdicts.

The defendants are set to be sentenced in April 2024, and each faces up to 20 years in prison. Both Mr Pittell and Mr Santiago declined to comment after the verdicts were announced.

In a statement, the prosecutors called the moving scheme “despicable”, saying it targeted victims “when they were most vulnerable and at the mercy of crooked movers holding their worldly possessions hostage”. NYTIMES