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December 7, 2005A May 2004 federal grand jury indictment accused jewelry makers Raphael S. Adouth and Lourdes M. Challiol, along with their companies, Rosenthal Jewelers Supply and Rosenthal LLC, of taking more than $8 million in cash from drug dealers as payment for gold bullion between October 1998 and March 2004.
The Internal Revenue Service and other government agencies began to focus on Adouth and Challiol because of the company’s large clientele of gold customers from Colombia who paid in cash, according to the defense attorneys. The government organized an undercover sting operation called Operation Gold Star.
The indictment charged the defendants with eight counts of money laundering conspiracy, alleging that they knowingly helping drug dealers launder money through the purchase of gold bullion.
The trial started last February. The defense team had to overcome juror prejudice because Adouth and Challiol were doing cash business with Colombians, said defense lawyer Howard Srebnick of Black Srebnick & Kornspan in Miami. The defense lawyers alleged that the government unfairly set up their clients and that IRS agents gave false and misleading testimony.
A key piece of evidence that apparently helped sink the government’s case was a tape obtained by his colleague Roy Black of a conversation between one of the IRS agents involved in the investigation and an informant. On the tape, undercover IRS agent Sergio Ramil expressed surprise that Adouth wouldn’t take the informant’s “sweet” deal and discussed how they needed to work harder to convince Adouth. Another agent called Adouth a “clown” and used an obscenity to describe him.
The IRS thought the tape machine was turned off when the offhand conversation was recorded. Prosecutors apparently did not review the tape before trial.
The defense did.
During the trial, Black asked Ramil whether he’d ever said such things, and Ramil denied it. Then Black played the devastating tape. The agent’s denials ruined his credibility with the jury and exposed how the government engaged in entrapment, Srebnick said.
In addition, the jury apparently was swayed by defense accounts of Adouth’s and Challiol’s long history of complying with the law and paying their taxes.
On March 3, following a three-week trial, a jury found the defendants not guilty on all counts.
Defense attorneys, in motions to obtain attorney fees and costs from the government, also accused the government of anti-Semitism in its prosecution of Adouth, a former synagogue president. Jane Moscowitz of Moscowitz Moscowitz & Magolnick in Miami said an informant referred to Adouth on surveillance tapes as “the Jew” and Black and Srebnick accused the government of gross insensitivity for calling the scheme “Operation Gold Star.” Moscowitz said that “can only be a reference to the yellow stars Jews were forced to wear in the Holocaust.”
Mark Schnapp, and Stehen J. Binhak of Greenberg Traurig represented Rosenthal Jewelry Supply, said what really won the case for the defendants was preparation and teamwork by the five defense lawyers. “We functioned very efficiently as a team,” he said. “Plus, we had clients we really believed in.”
The case in the U.S. District Court, Miami, was U.S.A. v. Raphael S. Adouth, Lourdes M. Challiol, Rosenthal Jewelry Supply and Rosenthal LLC of Miami.