Englewood Cliffs, NJ – Head Of Russian Radio Network accused in $3 million scheme

Englewood Cliffs, NJ – A man who ran a small Russian broadcasting company in Bergen County was indicted today for allegedly operating a scheme to bilk $3 million from finance companies, authorities said.

David Moro, 49, of Pomona, N.Y., was chief executive of Inchon, an Englewood Cliffs firm that ran the Russian Radio Network.

Authorities said he convinced financial firms — including Hewlett Packard Financial Services of Murray Hill and The CIT Group of Livingston — to buy high-end broadcasting equipment, which he promised to lease, said assistant U.S. Attorney Leslie Faye Schwartz.

Using fake invoices, he directed the firms to pay several vendors for the equipment, including a Parsippany company, Smart Function, authorities said. But the owner of Smart Function was in on the scheme, authorities said. He was not named in yesterday’s indictment.

Instead of buying new equipment, Smart Function kicked most of the money to Moro, authorities said. If the lenders wanted to inspect the components, Moro and his partner sometimes doctored serial numbers on old equipment and claimed it as new, authorities said.

Moro, who later told police the equipment was stolen, stopped making lease payment in October 2005, authorities said.

“He denies all the allegations, and he is looking forward to his day in court,” said Anna G. Cominsky, Moro’s lawyer.

The indictment charges him with mail fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering.

His radio station has more 17,000 subscribers in the metropolitan area who live in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, where Russian immigrants are estimated at 60 percent of the population. many of his listeners are Jewish.