Seven people who are accused of participating in an organized crime ring that sold merchandise stolen from retail stores to a Broward County pawn shop that then resold them online were arrested on Tuesday, the culmination of a three-year-long investigation.
With Tuesday’s arrests, a total of nine people are now facing charges for their alleged participation in the crime ring, including Igor Melomed, the owner of U.S. Pawn in Hollywood, to lower-level employees of the store, the Broward Sheriff’s Office said. All arrested were employees of the shop.
The investigation began in 2022 after numerous retail stores contacted the Sheriff’s Office about thefts, Robbery Unit Sgt. Rich Rossman told reporters Tuesday afternoon. The retailers followed people who they knew were stealing from their stores, and “everybody was going to U.S. Pawn,” located in the 5400 block of South State Road 7, he said.
Those accused in the ring are:
- Igor Melomed, 46, facing one count of racketeering;
- Marie Turene, 34, facing one count of racketeering and one count of dealing in stolen property;
- William LaCroix, 58, facing one count of racketeering;
- Lyndon Johnson, 37, facing one count of racketeering and three counts of dealing in stolen property;
- Edward Ibragimov, 39, facing one count of racketeering;
- Kevin Gilyard, 37, facing one count of racketeering and one count of dealing stolen property;
- Luis Bustos Diaz, 36, facing one count of racketeering;
- Natalia Kudelina, 49, facing one count of dealing in stolen property;
- Natalia Khodyreva, 40, facing two counts of dealing in stolen property.
The ring operated by thieves, known as “boosters,” stealing items ranging from over-the-counter medicines and vitamins to health and beauty products to power tools from major retail stores, Rossman said. The boosters then brought the stolen products to U.S. Pawn, where they sold the items for between 10 to 20 cents on the dollar. The pawn shop then resold the products online for more.
In February 2022, the manager of CVS’s Organized Retail Theft Unit, as well as several other stores, including Walgreens, Home Depot, Publix and Winn-Dixie, contacted the Sheriff’s Office, according to a probable cause affidavit for Kudelina’s arrest.
During surveillance of the pawn shop, employees were seen moving products to a warehouse with boarded windows in a strip mall directly behind the store, the probable cause affidavit said. The products were sold to Active Trade, a third party, and then sold on Amazon and other web-based retail sites.
The pawn shop bought “enormous amounts” of the stolen products, which were often new and still in the box and packaging, according to Rossman.
Some boosters came into the pawn shop selling items multiple times a day, making hundreds of thousands of dollars from what they sold over the course of the investigation, Rossman said, equating to millions of dollars in losses for the retail stores. Boosters were stealing not only from Broward County but throughout the state, he said, but had a “significant impact” locally.
“The vast majority that are doing this, this is their living,” he said. “This is what they do.”
An undercover detective went to the pawn shop during the Sheriff’s Office investigation and sold items purported to be stolen, Rossman said.
“He’d have to wait in line. They would close the door because they couldn’t accept any more customers because there was so much product all over the counters,” Rossman said. “They would bring it in trash bags, wheel it up in wagons. It was quite the operation, very lucrative, unfortunately. But their time has come.”
In December 2023, detectives obtained a warrant and conducted three searches that were “labor intensive” related to U.S. Pawn, Rossman said. From the searches at the State Road 7 storefront, a storage unit behind it and a second shop in Fort Lauderdale, detectives found a total of 53 pallets of products believed to be stolen, an inventory worth about $750,000.