Nicolae Popescu walked out of jail in 2010 after being held for 29 days without formal charges. Last week, The U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of NY, based in Brooklyn, unsealed an indictment against Popescu and his accomplices, according to The Brooklyn Eagle.
The Romanian and his alleged co-conspirators used websites like Ebay and Cars.com to convince American buyers that they had cars for sale, collect the money and then disappear. There were never any cars for sale. It’s the dark side of online shopping.
Apparently, Popescu was rounded up in this sting in Romania (article in Romanian) in 2010. The story from there gets a little odd. He was held for 29 days. According to Romanian law, if charges haven’t been filed at the end of that time, alleged criminals are free to go. It seems that so many people had been arrested that the authorities simply didn’t get all the papers filed in time. Popescu apparently knew the law and asked to be released when the time was up, according to this cyber-crime blog, which lists a fascinating array of items seized in the raid:
77,350 euros, 49,000 U.S. dollars, 64,860 pounds, 60,645 lei, a luxury watch, a rifle, three pistols and 150 grams of gold. 70 laptops, 165 mobile phones, 35 desktop computers, 15 modems, new servers, 10 blank cards, 2425 SIM cards, 40 cards, 325 memory sticks , 1040 CD-DVD, 20 hard disks, 30 disks and six video cameras. As well as seven cars, worth over 300,000 euros.
Whether or not that account is strictly in accord with the facts, the indictment above makes it clear that the alleged ringleader of the fictional-cars-for sale scam remains at large.
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