Avtandil Khurtsidze Faces 40 Years, Racketeeing Trial Begins

[Ruthless-RKO]

On Monday, the boxer's racketeering trial began.

Khurtsidze has been in federal lockup since his arrest and faces as a much as 40 years if convicted.

“Shulaya acted as the boss and Khurtsidze acted as his solider,” prosecutor Andrew Thomas told the jury, according to the New York Post.

Khurtsidze’s lawyer, Megan Benett, said the two men knew each other from their days in post-Soviet Georgia and that they “socialized together” — but they were not associates in a criminal organization.
But the video evidence may create some issues for Khurtsidze.

The prosecutors indicated to the jury, that several videos in their possession will show the boxer threatening or assaulting people on behalf of Shulaya.

In one video, as BS.com reported last year, Khurtsidze is seen punching a man directly in the face after he is accused of stealing money from a Brighton Beach poker ring Shulaya allegedly ran. Shulaya then slaps to the man’s face and tell him he had better pay up or suffer the consequences.

“You will hear threat after threat after threat,” Thomas said of Khurtsidze.

The organization, which Khurtsidze is alleged to have been a part of, is being accused of running several illegal operations - including the buying and selling untaxed cigarettes, running an illegal poker ring that cheated its players and hacking the code on slot machine software so that members of the organization could rig the winnings.

[jamamb]

sounds like khurts a real thug, just as his career was hitting its stride it caught up to him

[Ruthless-RKO]

sounds like khurts a real thug, just as his career was hitting its stride it caught up to him

BJS probably wasn't feeling the fight and had some private investigators look into Avtandil.

[chuck9788]

sounds like khurts a real thug, just as his career was hitting its stride it caught up to him

Former interim WBO interim middleweight champion Avtandil Khurtsidze is facing up to forty years in prison after being found guilty on racketeering, wire fraud and other charges.

Lou DiBella, Khurtsidze's promoter, was disgusted with the fighter.

"He's gotten due process. F--- him for squandering his championship-caliber skills and career," DiBella said. "He let many people down who believed in him, but no one more than himself. Just a waste, and it's all on him for choosing the dark side."


http://www.espn.com/boxing/story/_/id/2 ... minal-ring

[Ruthless-RKO]

Avtandil Khurtsidze Hit With 10 Year Prison Sentence

One-time middleweight contender Avtandil Khurtsidze has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for his role as an enforcer for a criminal organization in New York City.

Khurtsidze was sentenced after being convicted in June of one count of racketeering and one count of wire fraud conspiracy.

Khurtsidze, 38 and of Kutaisi, Republic of Georgia, was the enforcer for Razhden Shulaya of the Shulaya Enterprise — a criminal group from the former Soviet Union.

According to Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman, citing court documents, the Shulaya Enterprise was an organized criminal group operating under the direction and protection of Razhden Shulaya.

Khurtsidze acted as Shulaya’s chief enforcer, a role in which he allegedly engaged in multiple acts of extortion and violence, court documents state.

Khurtsidze was captured on video assaulting others in service of the Shulaya Enterprise twice. He also allegedly participated in recorded acts of extortion of gambling debts and planned additional acts of violence against those he felt disrespected his boss.

Additionally, prosecutors claim that Khurtsidze participated in a scheme to defraud casinos by targeting particular models of electronic slot machines using a complicated algorithm designed to predict the behavior of those machines.

In addition to his decade-long prison term, Khurtsidze was also sentenced to two years of supervised release.

Last year, the tough boxer was on the verge of a mandatory world title shot, when he knocked out Tommy Langford in April to secure a crack at WBO world champion Billy Joe Saunders.

But before he was able to get his hands on Saunders, the hard punching Khurtsidze was arrested as a part of a RICO prosecution in connection with Shulaya.

[Ruthless-RKO]

Former interim champ Avtandil Khurtsidze appeals his prison sentence

In 2017, Avtandil Khurtsidze was the WBO interim title holder and mandatory contender in the middleweight division, heading for a showdown with Billy Joe Saunders. He has a pro record of 33-2-2. But his career came screeching to a halt when he was accused, and then convicted, of serving as an enforcer for the "Shulaya Enterprise," a criminal organization allegedly centered in the Russian-immigrant section of Brooklyn, New York that operated gambling parlors, extorted payments from gamblers and local businesses, trafficked in stolen goods and contraband cigarettes, committed identity theft and credit card fraud, and engaged in a conspiracy to defraud casinos. Prosecutors said that Khurtisdze was Shulaya's pimary enforcer. Khurtsidze got a ten-year sentence but his attorneys recently argued an appeal in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. The appeal focused primarily on the length of the sentence but also seeks to overturn the conviction itself.

The head of the enterprise, Razhden Shulaya, was sentenced to 45 years in prison. Khurtsidze's ten-year sentence was the second longest, with several others receiving shorter sentences.

According to his court filings, Khurtsidze was training and living in the Republic of Georgia before the United States government lured him back for purposes of his arrest in a criminal case, his first prosecution. Again, according to the boxer's defense team, his role in the Shulaya Enterprise was limited to collecting a poker debt and two assaults that resulted in no hospitalization or serious injury, and those actions resulted in a conviction for racketeering conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy. The district court sentenced him to a ten-year term on each count, to run concurrently [at the same time], more than double the recommended federal sentencing guidelines range –a multiplier not applied to any other defendant in the case.

Khurtsidze's attorneys have appealed the length of the sentence, arguing that the district court gave hiim ten years for a relatively minor offense because of Khurtsidze’s national origin and the judge wanting to send “a message” to other foreigners who might seek “to come to the shores of the United States.” Khurtsidze’s status as a national of a foreign country would therefore serve “to convey and be a vehicle for a message of general deterrence” to “the Georgian community, both here and abroad[.]” The quoted language was from the sentencing judge and serves as the basis for the appeal asking that Khurtsidze’s conviction and sentence to be vacated.

A ruling on the appeal is expected in a few weeks.

Now 41 years old, Khurtsidze is reported to have participated in a brawl at a detention facility at which he and Shulaya had been held. The violence resulted from Shulaya’s effort to take an open cell in the unit for himself. When other inmates assaulted Shulaya, Khurtsidze intervened to fight them off—suffering serious injuries in the process.

[margaret thatcher]

khurt was a fun little crazy bastard

im not sure getting into prison brawls is gonna help get him out though

[Thomastearns]

"..according to the boxer's defense team, his role in the Shulaya Enterprise was limited to collecting a poker debt and two assaults that resulted in no hospitalization or serious injury, and those actions resulted in a conviction for racketeering conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy. The district court sentenced him to a ten-year term on each count, to run concurrently [at the same time], more than double the recommended federal sentencing guidelines range –a multiplier not applied to any other defendant in the case.

Khurtsidze's attorneys have appealed the length of the sentence, arguing that the district court gave hiim ten years for a relatively minor offense because of Khurtsidze’s national origin and the judge wanting to send “a message” to other foreigners who might seek “to come to the shores of the United States.”


Upside down world.

Home grown criminals running rife in the White House casually filling their pockets while 'foreigners' like Khurt get slapped down for a bit of good ol' fashioned 'leg breaking' - not actual leg-breaking Sonny Liston style (it was a police officers leg in Sonny's case apparently!).

Isn't 10 years just a little excessive or is this more of a case of double standards, and an entrapment witch-hunt to boot?

Scapegoating or justice?

[emallini]

I like Tyson

[Jeff_lacy_ko]

10 year rico for 2 minor assaults?

So US is housing him for 10 years? Why not just deportation and not waste time?

[margaret thatcher]

10 year rico for 2 minor assaults?

So US is housing him for 10 years? Why not just deportation and not waste time?

lol those were my thoughts too, why waste the resources on him

[Ruthless-RKO]

10 year rico for 2 minor assaults?

So US is housing him for 10 years? Why not just deportation and not waste time?

lol those were my thoughts too, why waste the resources on him

And it said they called him over from Georgia, just to charge him and put him in jail.

What if he had not flown to US?

[Jeff_lacy_ko]

10 year rico for 2 minor assaults?

So US is housing him for 10 years? Why not just deportation and not waste time?

lol those were my thoughts too, why waste the resources on him

And it said they called him over from Georgia, just to charge him and put him in jail.

What if he had not flown to US?

I get calling him over to charge and try to flip his testimony. But when he wouldnt i would have sent him packing what an effin waste

[Ruthless-RKO]

Khurtsidze's criminal appeal is partially successful; he will be resentenced

Former middleweight contender Avtandil Khurtsidze was partially successful on the appeal of his criminal conviction for organized crime-related activity. The United States' Second Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed Khurtsidze's conviction, but vacated his ten-year prison sentence and ordered the trial judge to resentence him. The basis of the ruling was that the trial judge made improper comments that she was issuing Khurtsidze's sentence in part because she wanted to deter Russian organized crime. Khurtsidze, age 41, is from the Republic of Georgia and was convicted of serving as an enforcer for a Russian mobster in Brooklyn, New York.

In 2017, Khurtsidze was the WBO interim title holder and mandatory middleweight contender, heading for a showdown against Billy Joe Saunders. He had a pro record of 33-2-2. But his career came screeching to a halt when he was convicted of serving as an enforcer for the "Shulaya Enterprise," a criminal organization allegedly centered in the Russian-immigrant section of Brooklyn, New York that operated gambling parlors, extorted payments from gamblers and local businesses, trafficked in stolen goods and contraband cigarettes, committed identity theft, credit card fraud, and engaged in a conspiracy to defraud casinos. Prosecutors said that Khurtisdze was Shulaya's primary enforcer. In an interview given in 2019, Khurtsidze claimed he turned down a plea bargain that would have resulted in a three-year sentence. Khurtsidze was convicted at trial and received a ten-year sentence (actually, he was sentenced to two concurrent terms of ten years) but his attorneys appealed both the conviction and the length of the sentence.

While he failed to reverse his conviction, in an April 202g rulinf, Khurtsidze successfully appealed the length of his sentence as unreasonable. Khurtsidze argued that the sentencing judge made improper statements that created an appearance that his national origin (Georgian) and immigration status were being held againsat him when deciding the length of the sentence.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, stating, “it has long been settled in this Circuit that although reference to national origin and naturalized status is permissible during sentencing, it is allowed only so long as it does not become the basis for determining the sentence... Although we are confident that the [sentencing judge] harbored no bias towards Khurtsidze based on his nationality or immigration status, we are compelled by certain comments made by the [judge] to remand [Khurtsidze's case back to the judge] for resentencing. In its discussion of the general deterrent effect of the sentence it imposed, the [judge] commented that Khurtsidze’s sentence 'may well be watched by the Georgian community, both here and abroad,' and expressed the view that Khurtsidze’s sentence would send a 'message' that 'Russian organized crime that seeks to come to the shores of the United States . . . will be dealt with, with the power of our criminal justice system.' References of this sort 'to the publicity a sentence might receive in the defendant’s ethnic community or native country' and to deterring others sharing that national origin from violating United States laws in the future create an improper appearance that a defendant’s national origin or immigration status might be driving the choice of sentence. We therefore remand with instructions that the district court vacate Khurtsidze’s sentence and conduct a resentencing."

The head of the enterprise, Razhden Shulaya, was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

[margaret thatcher]

fricken anti georgian/russian hater woman judges