by KYW's Pat Loeb
The former head of a Newtown, Pa. (Bucks County) company has landed on the FBI's ten most wanted list. He's accused of bilking investors of millions of dollars and fleeing to his native Russia.
Semion Mogilevich is reputed to be one of Russia's most powerful mobsters. The FBI says he owned a major stake in YBM Magnex, whose worldwide headquarters were on Terry Drive in Newtown in the 1990's.
YBM supposedly made magnets but FBI spokesman JJ Klaver says the only thing Mogilevich wanted to attract was money:
"Really no magnets were being manufactured. It was a shell company set up to defraud investors and the investors in that company were defrauded out of $150 million."
Klaver says those are the charges Mogilevich faces, but it's really his world wide organized crime ties that put him on the most wanted list. He says authorities are pretty sure he's in Russia-- which has no extradition treaty with the U.S. -- but they're hoping they'll get him if he travels.
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