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“To Us, It Was Better Than Citibank.”

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This is a good, comprehensive account of the career of the mobbed-up crook who would go on to arrange payoffs for the world’s most powerful mobbed-up crook:

More recently, Mr. Cohen and his father-in-law lent more than $25 million to a Ukrainian businessman who has a checkered financial record and a history of defaulting on loans. And Mr. Cohen long held a small stake in his uncle’s catering hall, which was frequented by Russian and Italian mobsters.

In addition to his legal and taxi businesses, Mr. Cohen has had a seemingly charmed touch as a real estate investor. On one day in 2014, he sold four buildings in Manhattan for $32 million, entirely in cash. That was nearly three times what he paid for them no more than three years earlier.

[…]

The $130,000 payment to the actress is in a way emblematic of Mr. Cohen’s many business dealings. Its provenance is murky, obfuscated by a private agreement, pseudonyms and evolving explanations. President Trump said this past week that he had paid Mr. Cohen a retainer that was used to reimburse the $130,000, directly contradicting his earlier statements that he knew of no payment to Ms. Daniels.

[…]

In 1999, Mr. Cohen would find himself in the middle of a Sunny Isles real estate deal involving a hockey player and a purported figure from the Russian underworld.

Nearly 20 years later, the details of the transaction remains unclear, but Mr. Cohen received a check for $350,000 from a Russian player for the Montreal Canadiens that was part of a deal involving an apartment in Sunny Isles.

The player’s agent later testified that the money was intended to go to Vitaly Buslaev. Mr. Buslaev, who has been identified by multiple Russian media outlets as a Mafia figure, was a friend of one of Mr. Cohen’s business partners, according to two people who knew both men.

[…]

The no-fault insurance schemes, which were often masterminded by organized crime figures from the former Soviet Union, all followed a basic template. Staged or exaggerated car accidents were used to generate a tidal wave of “patients.” Transportation companies then took the patients — often low-level criminals — to what in many instances were sham medical clinics, diagnostic testing offices, and acupuncture and physical therapy offices. Billing companies were created to collect money from insurers, and management companies then siphoned the funds out to the scheme’s operators. Some operators were so bold that they sued insurers that had stopped paying after they realized they were being defrauded.

Mr. Cohen’s role, if any, in the operation of the companies he helped set up was unclear. The only people listed in the incorporation papers as having roles in the businesses are the two doctors, Aleksandr Martirosov and Zhanna Kanevsky, who were each affiliated with a medical practice.

But both of those doctors were accused of insurance fraud in connection with different medical practices they operated.

Plenty of more detail in the story. I’m sure Cooley Law will try to incorporated “real estate speculation profits by alumni” into its highly objective law school ratings system.

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