A Brooklyn man was sentenced to 48 months in prison for his part in a multi-year international bank heist.
Garri Smith and his co-conspirators stole $30 million from bank safety deposit boxes in seven foreign countries, including Ukraine, Russia, North Macedonia, Moldova, Latvia, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, federal prosecutors said.
According to court filings and facts presented during the sentencing proceeding, members of Smith’s group posed as customers and rent safety deposit boxes, sometimes using fake IDs.
“After they gained access to rooms at the banks where these safety deposit boxes were located, they used specialized medical equipment to take photographs of the inside of the locks on other customers’ safety deposit boxes,” explained the U.S. Attorney’s Office in a news release.
“Using these photographs, the conspirators created duplicate keys to access the safety deposit boxes and used those keys to steal money and other valuables, including jewelry and gold bars, from the banks’ customers.”
Those gains were then laundered into their United States-based bank accounts.
For his role in the thefts, 52-year-old Smith was accountable for a loss of $5.1 million. He pled guilty in June 2022.
