Manhattan prosecutors on Monday unsealed an indictment that reads like a high-finance shell game, accusing six people and two companies of siphoning more than $76.4 million from commercial lenders. Filed in New York State Supreme Court, the case alleges the group hid the theft behind sham invoices, fake companies and a supposed third-party escrow service that prosecutors say actually functioned like the defendants' own bank. At the center of the allegations are a telecommunications firm called Silver Birch Systems and a business named Teleescrow, described in the indictment as core to the setup.
In a post from Alvin L. Bragg Jr., Manhattan's district attorney said the indictment charges grand larceny in the first degree, first-degree scheme to defraud and fourth-degree conspiracy, and that the alleged loss tops $76.4 million. The announcement says six individuals and two corporate entities have been indicted, with multiple commercial funders identified as victims. Bragg credited a roster of international and federal partners, including the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office, City of London Police, His Majesty's Revenue & Customs, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Marshals Service, for their roles in the investigation.
According to prosecutors, the defendants include Silver Birch chief executive Daniel Oshatz and Teleescrow CEO Eillien Lorena Cabrera de Landestoy, along with Tristan Napoleon Desechenes Martinez, Jonathan Deutsch, Alfredo Domingo Patnella Tezanos and Benjamin Koifman in other alleged roles tied to finance and wiring operations. "As alleged, these defendants worked together to orchestrate an elaborate fraud," Bragg wrote in the announcement. The indictment claims commercial funders were misled through layers of falsified paperwork and fabricated companies that made bogus financing arrangements look legitimate on paper.
How prosecutors say the scheme worked
Prosecutors say the operation blended invoice-factoring deals with a lockbox and escrow structure so that lenders advanced cash against supposed receivables while customer payments were routed into Teleescrow's account and then diverted. A federal receivership opinion reviewed by investigators and available on GovInfo found that Silver Birch agreed to a lockbox arrangement and that Teleescrow handled receipts and disbursements through a Metropolitan Commercial Bank account. Those civil records provide a paper trail that prosecutors say helped trace the flow of money from commercial funders into accounts tied to the defendants.
Years of litigation and a tangled corporate web
Silver Birch and Teleescrow have already surfaced in separate state-court dockets and related civil suits that raised flags about the same intercompany relationships and contested transfers, according to public court records. A New York state docket listing Silver Birch and Teleescrow among the defendants is available on Justia, and earlier filings by receivers and lenders described millions of dollars moving between related entities and accounts controlled by insiders. Prosecutors say those civil claims and the receiver's work helped identify the allegedly fabricated companies and the routes money took out of the lending system.
What's next
The charges in the indictment are allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court. The filing starts a process that could include arraignments, discovery and pretrial motions in state court, with commercial funders named in the indictment likely to be key witnesses. Prosecutors have signaled that the probe relied on cross-border cooperation but did not set a public timetable for upcoming hearings in the announcement.
Research note: At the time of publication, the primary public record of the criminal announcement was the Manhattan D.A.'s post on X, and independent reporting was limited, while civil court records and a federal receivership opinion provided supporting documentation of the companies' prior entanglements. This account relies on the D.A.'s announcement and the cited court filings to summarize the allegations and the related civil history.
