People v. Mahboubian

543 N.E.2d 34 (1989)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Mahboubian (D) insured a collection or antiques with Lloyd's of London for $18.5 million. D wanted to ship the collection to the United States, to sell it. He rented a vault at Morgan Brothers. Codefendant Sakhai (D1) accompanied D to Morgan Brothers. A month later, D1 too rented a vault at Morgan Brothers, attempting unsuccessfully to get space on the same floor as Mahboubian. D1 contacted Garabedian and a crew to do an insurance job. One of the crew, Cardebat, had agreed to act as a police informant and secretly recorded all of their conversations with D1. When the crew went to D1's place, D1 was heard talking on the phone in Farsi to someone in London named D about a job they will do. D1 explained the job to the crew, and they accepted $100,000 for the theft. D1 flew to England. D and the collection arrived in New York. D1 met with and informed them of the shipment's itinerary. D1 made a call to find out where the goods were going to be stored at the Regency. D1 then left the meeting to discover the exact location of the goods. Before actual shipment, D marked his initials in red on the shipping crates. When the shipment arrived, D1 made more calls to D. D1 met with the crew in January and insisted that the burglary take place at the Regency immediately. D1 told the crew that it would ruin the entire plan even if one item went on the market. Two nights later, the burglary took place. The crew found the boxes outside the vault; Regency personnel had never put the boxes inside the vault. As they passed the boxes out of the warehouse, they were arrested. Cardebat then telephoned D1 from the precinct on the pretext of arranging for delivery of the stolen goods and agreed to meet him at La Guardia Airport. D1 was arrested on his way there. D was not charged with participation in the crime until several months later after he had been interviewed and allegedly made a number of significant misrepresentations about his arrangements to ship and store his collection. Ds were tried together and convicted and appealed.