Fugitive Pleads Guilty to Illegal Caviar Imports & Duty Evasion After 23 Years On the Lam
After spending over 23 years as a fugitive, Isidoro “Mario” Garbarino pleaded guilty to one count of falsely classifying imported goods, as well as one count of making false statements, in connection with the illegal import of over 100,000 pounds of Russian and Iranian caviar valued at over $10 million, the Justice Department said. Garbarino, an Italian citizen, charged and indicted in 1987, fled the country while on bail in 1989, and was finally arrested by U.S. Marshals in September 2012. Having already agreed to make restitution of $3 million for unpaid duties and related penalties and interest, Garbarino also faces a maximum of four years in prison at sentencing, DOJ said.
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At the time of his arrest in 1987, Garbarino was the president and owner of the now-defunct Aquamar Gourmet Imports, a company that supplied luxury food items, including Russian and Iranian caviar, to prominent New York City gourmet firms such as Zabar’s and to some of the world’s largest air and cruise lines, DOJ said. At the time, Russian and Iranian caviar were dutiable at about 30 percent.
Between 1984 and 1987, Garbarino and Aquamar used several schemes to avoid the tariffs, DOJ said. For example, he would significantly understate the weight and value of the caviar he was importing by placing orders for thousands of pounds of caviar—with a wholesale value of hundreds of thousands of dollars—while declaring to the United States Customs Service that he was importing a small fraction of that amount, it said. In another scheme, Garbarino would arrange for Russian or Iranian caviar to land at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, purportedly for immediate exportation to customers overseas, it said. Garbarino would then secretly substitute much cheaper American caviar for the expensive Russian or Iranian caviar that had just arrived, export the domestic goods, and unlawfully import and sell the foreign caviar to his U.S. customers. In so doing, Garbarino avoided paying the required tariffs to the U.S. for the expensive foreign caviar, and defrauded his international customers who were paying full price for the imported caviar, but were instead receiving the cheaper American caviar, DOJ said.