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https://www.local10.com/news/local/2024/03/21/south-florida-pawn-shop-owner-implicated-in-scheme-to-launder-millions/

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – A man who owns several South Florida pawn shops is facing federal charges as part of what prosecutors say is a multi-million dollar scheme to launder money, including drug proceeds, using fraudulent gift cards and money orders.

Andrey Perov, 38, was booked into the Broward County jail and made his initial appearance in Fort Lauderdale federal court on Wednesday.

According to court documents, he owns Bee Pawn LLC, with locations in Miami-Dade, Broward and Orange counties and Hard Rock Giffies, a pawn shop at 5814 Stirling Road in Hollywood.

Prosecutors said Perov came on their radar after a confidential source, cooperating with authorities after a Broward drug trafficking conviction, told investigators that a co-conspirator of Perov had laundered drug money for him.

According to FBI charging documents, in 2021, the confidential informant, then working for federal agents, asked the co-conspirator to launder $110,000 in narcotics proceeds.

FBI agents said that the co-conspirator didn’t want to launder the cash, but he knew someone who could: Perov.

Investigators recorded an undercover interview with Perov in January 2021, where he told the informant that he owned several South Florida pawn shops and “could always use U.S. currency to purchase ‘gift cards,’” the court documents state.

An FBI agent said in the interview, the informant expressed concern about the source of the money.

“I don’t want it to come back and haunt me,” the informant told Perov, according to court documents. “This is dirty money. You know, this is drug money that I did...a while back...Selling pills and stuff like that.”

The charging documents state Perov then asked, “Selling what?”

“Huh?” prosecutors said the informant responded. “Selling pills.”

“Pills? OK,” Perov is accused of responding. “No, I don’t judge.”

Perov then agreed to launder $11,000 for the informant and deposit the proceeds in the informant’s bank account, which was actually controlled by law enforcement, FBI agents allege, and instructed the informant to deal with his assistant for future money laundering endeavors.

Agents said Perov’s assistant laundered $99,000 for the informant over the following months.

Then, according to court documents, from December 2021 to November 2022, a second confidential informant, a Russian speaker, provided Perov’s assistant with $540,000 worth of FBI-purchased gift cards and got $460,000 back.

“According to Co-Conspirator 2, (Perov) mentioned on more than one occasion that the pawn shops needed to have a money transmitting license to conduct the business of redeeming the gift cards and money orders,” court documents state. “However, (Perov) never obtained either a Federal or State money remitting license.”

Further, the court documents state that the co-conspirator ”estimated that approximately 70% of all gift cards and 100% of all money orders that were sold to (Perov)’s stores were fraudulent.”

“The Co-Conspirator explained that there was no legitimate reason why someone would want to sell a money order to the store since money orders could already be used to pay bills, rent, etc. They were as liquid as cash,” agents wrote.

The co-conspirator said, according to the FBI, that he or she believed that most of the gift cards and money orders sold to Perov’s stores came from “suspicious” people involved in “criminal activity,” explaining that “generally no photo identification was taken from certain individuals who were selling large quantities of gift cards/money orders to the store.”

“The Co-Conspirator recalled that sometimes when photo identifications were requested, the male customers provided a female’s photo identification card,” agents wrote.

Authorities later obtained a search warrant to go through an online ledger maintained by Perov, which showed that his pawn shops redeemed roughly $53 million in money orders and gift cards, approximately $2 million of which were denied “due to fraud or theft,” court documents state.

Some of Perov’s top customers used apparent pseudonyms to hide their true identities, authorities allege.

Names listed on the ledger, they said, included “Tom Hanks,” “Michael Jackson” and “Fats Fatz” and many profiles didn’t have a corresponding identification card, court documents state.

Some customers redeemed hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gift cards each, authorities allege.

Perov is facing charges of conspiracy to launder monetary instruments and conspiracy to engage in monetary transactions in property derived from a specified unlawful activity and opening a money transmitting business without a license.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Panayotta Augustin‐Birch ordered Perov remain held on pretrial detention, according to online records.

He was being held in the Broward Main Jail as of Thursday morning.