Russian businessman Semion Mogilevich has been wanted by the FBI for three years. It is common knowledge that Semion Mogilevich, reputedly Russian mafia and wealthy, linked in press reports to arms dealing and money laundering, is a wanted man. Yet parts and subsidiaries of Mr. Mogilevich’s disbanded former company, YBM, have registered as corporations – and one as an LLC – in Virginia. Some of these companies are defunct and their records purged in the state database, but some show filings as recent as 2006.

As the FBI poster reads, Mogilevich is wanted along with confederates for “alleged participation in a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud investors in the stock of YBM Magnex International, Inc. (YBM), a public company incorporated in Canada, but headquartered in Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Investors lost more than $150 million through the alleged scheme that included inflating stock values, preparing bogus financial books and records, lying to Securities and Exchange Commission officials, and offering bribes to accountants . . . A federal indictment, issued for the men on April 24, 2003, in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, charges them all with 45 counts of racketeering, securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, and money laundering.”

FBI photographs of Mogilevich show a middle-aged man in his late 50s, about 5’7” and 290 pounds, described as a heavy smoker with pockmarks on his face, born a Ukrainian in Kiev, principal residence in Moscow. Aliases include Seva Moguilevich, Semon Yudkovich Palagnyuk, Semen Yukovich Telesh, Simeon Mogilevitch, Semjon Mogilevcs, Shimon Makelwitsh, Shimon Makhelwitsch, "Seva." Final note: “Should be considered armed and dangerous and an escape risk.”

According to the FBI, “The indictment alleges that between 1993 and September of 1998, Semion Mogilevich headed and controlled the Mogilevich Enterprise, an association which consisted of the aforementioned individuals and a network of companies in over twenty different countries which orchestrated a sophisticated scheme to defraud investors in YBM stock . . . This complex network of corporations was set up to create the illusion that YBM was engaged in a profitable international business . . ."

Mogilevich’s former company at some point mutated from Pennsylvania to Northern Virginia, at least on paper. Follow this part closely.

Public records show that company names in the Mogilevich corporate network included YBM, Inc.; YBM Magnex; Arbat International, based in Moscow and sold in spring 1996; United Trade, a wholly owned subsidiary; and others. All of these entities named show up in Virginia’s State Corporation Commission database.

Corporation records disappear when purged, but their corporate ID numbers -- database entry numbers -- linger like the Cheshire cat’s smile. “Arbat” appears as both Arbat and Arbat Escrow Company, purged September 2004; its record number also produced the name “Magnex” (0338060), with a Resident Agent listed in Virginia Beach.

“United Trade, Inc.” (F0339033-8), purged, briefly showed before disappearing the same corporate president and secretary as “YBM, Inc.,” both with a principal office address given as “1180 Loance Rd,” Norfolk VA. This turns out actually to be 1180 Lance Road, the home address for Bax Global, Expediting Co. Inc., and Performance Deliveries Inc.

YBM, Inc. (0587472-2) and YBM Asset Management (0587471-4) are shown as “fee delinquent” as of December 2005. Their filings, which appear to be current through January 2006, list a Norfolk attorney as Resident Agent and the same Virginia couple as corporate president and secretary. The principal office for YBM Asset Management is listed at 1090 West 35^th Street, Norfolk, the address of a Yellow Cab Company.

The same principal address, RA and corporate president and secretary are also recorded for “YBM Properties LLC” (S087263-2), again at what is apparently the home of a Yellow Cab and of Aaaa Self Storage, in Norfolk.

On September 3, 2001, the London al-Quds al-Arabi, an independent Arabic language daily newspaper in London, ran a report relying heavily on the previous day’s Sunday Express (London) newspaper. A plane originating in northern Africa had crashed on arrival at Malaga, Spain, on August 29, killing the pilot and three passengers and injuring others, including a Moroccan “suspected of being a bag-man for bin Laden,” who was treated briefly at a nearby hospital and released. The intelligence services of three countries were said to be tracking him; the Express cited Israel’s Mossad as believing that the passenger was going to a meeting with, among others, associates of Mogilevich.

High time the FBI got those new computers.