Ex-business partner of Ivanka Trump and alleged tax evader Moshe Lax, who co-owned Madison Avenue Diamonds with the president’s daughter under the name Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, has been accused by fellow jeweller Boris Aronov of luring him into a multimillion-dollar diamond fraud, as reported by the New York Post.
Moshe Lax, an American businessman and a friend of Trump’s family, who helped Ivanka with the launch of her fine jewellery line and the opening of her Upper East Side boutique back in 2007, was sued by the Justice Department last summer for taking part in a massive tax evasion scheme that potentially deprived the government of more than $60 million in tax liabilities.
A new Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed by fellow jeweller Boris Aronov claims that Lax also fleeced him out of more than $2.5 million in a fraud deal with Tiffany & Co.
The court papers suggest that in March 2017, Lax asked Aronov to buy $3 million in diamonds that would later be sold to Tiffany and that the profit divided between the partners; however, the businessman did not actually have a deal with the company, but only took the diamonds and sold them on the open market, while replacing their certification numbers.
Moshe Lax “had no valid purchase orders from Tiffany and he had no intention to sell the diamonds supplied by Boris to Tiffany. Moshe did not disclose these facts to Boris”, the lawsuit papers say, as argued by the New York Post.
It has been suggested that Lax, who had not paid Aronov by August 2017, and later returned only 44 diamonds, thereby potentially owing him $2.5 million, used the profits to instead pay back Baruch and Judah Rosenfeld, to whom he owed millions of dollars.
“Baruch and Judah encouraged Moshe to make the Tiffany Misrepresentations so that they could together obtain the Boris Diamonds and sell them on the open market and secure the proceeds therefrom to satisfy debts that Moshe owed to the Rosenfelds”, the court documents claim, citing the Rosenfelds as defendants in the suit.
Surprisingly, Lax was not named as a defendant in the case, as he already entered into a $3 million judgment with Aronov in court in September 2017.
Ivanka Trump has not been accused of any participation in the fraud or other wrongdoings, but a federal lawsuit against Lax is still ongoing.