Latest on Exclusive | Sprawling $2.45M NYC home tied to $70M counterfeiting ring heads to auction for just $900K

23 on 3,500 square feet, five-bedroom Queens colonial, which comes with a sauna and a two-car garage. See more of our coverage in your search results. A sprawling Forest Hills home tied to two brothers who helped finance a massive international counterfeit-money operation is hitting the auction block — with Uncle Sam opening the bidding at $900,000 — just $50,000 more than they paid for it more than two decades ago. The five-bedroom Colonial at 110-37 69th Ave. will be sold in an online federal auction on Oct.

23, according to the US Treasury Department, more than a decade after brothers Eduard and Arkadiy Bangiyev were arrested in a sprawling racketeering case involving tens of millions of dollars in fake US currency. The 3,572-square-foot Queens home, built in 1930, has 4½ bathrooms, an enclosed porch, a finished basement with an additional bedroom and bathroom, a sauna and a detached two-car garage. The home is currently valued at a whopping $2.455 million, according to Redfin. The property sits on a roughly 5,000-square-foot lot and will be sold “as is,” according to the government auction listing.

What we know

But behind the leafy Forest Hills address is a tangled history of counterfeit cash, an alleged $1 million jewelry fraud and years of litigation over who actually owned the property. Eduard and Arkadiy Bangiyev bought the home in 2003 for $850,000 with a $750,000 mortgage, according to a 2023 ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Beginning in 2004, the brothers participated in a criminal enterprise that manufactured and distributed enormous quantities of counterfeit US currency, according to federal prosecutors and court records. The operation produced high-quality counterfeit notes in Israel and the US and smuggled them into the country concealed inside shipping containers carrying machinery.

Key details

At its peak, the organization was bringing as much as $3 million in counterfeit currency into the US every three months, according to the Justice Department. More than $80 million in counterfeit currency was ultimately passed or seized around the world in connection with the operation, prosecutors said. The Bangiyev brothers, who operated a retail jewelry store on Long Island and later a gold-refining business in Manhattans Diamond District, helped finance the enterprise and distribute its counterfeit currency, according to federal authorities. Both pleaded guilty in January 2015 to participating in a RICO conspiracy involving counterfeiting and money structuring.

Arkadiy was sentenced that September to nine years — 108 months — in federal prison, while Eduard received eight years, or 96 months. As part of their plea agreements, both also agreed to forfeit property derived from or traceable to their racketeering activity. The Forest Hills house became one of the assets caught up in that forfeiture. But the propertys legal history was complicated by another alleged fraud that was separate from the counterfeit-currency conspiracy.

According to the Fourth Circuit, a federal district court found that money used to pay off the homes mortgage and home-equity lines of credit in 2012 came from a scheme devised by the brothers to defraud a jewelry customer out of $1 million. That alleged scheme was “unrelated to the RICO conspiracy” underlying their later criminal convictions, the appellate court stressed. It instead prompted the federal government to bring civil-forfeiture proceedings in New York in 2009 against the 69th Avenue home and another Forest Hills property. The government dismissed that earlier case in 2011 in exchange for a $662,500 settlement signed by the brothers and their sister, Ilana Bangiyeva, according to the court.

Why it matters

Years later, the ownership of the 69th Avenue home became the subject of another lengthy court fight following the brothers RICO convictions. Before their convictions, the deed divided ownership three ways: Arkadiy held one-third; their sister Ilana held another third; and Eduard and his wife, Irina Alishayeva, jointly held the remaining third, according to the Fourth Circuit. Ilana argued that she had legitimately acquired interests in the home and other assets using proceeds from a gold investment she said she made with her brothers. But the district court rejected that account, finding insufficient evidence to establish that the claimed gold investment had produced the money used to acquire the assets.

The Fourth Circuit later upheld that finding. The district court ultimately determined that the Forest Hills property provided a “source of influence” over the brothers racketeering enterprise and ordered it forfeited. The government wound up with a two-thirds ownership interest in the property, while Alishayeva retained a one-third share. Initially, a federal judge allowed Alishayeva — whose primary residence was the Forest Hills house — to remain there for the rest of her life as long as she remained married to Eduard, leaving the government effectively unable to sell its majority stake.

In 2023, the Fourth Circuit sided with the government, ruling that the lower court did not have the authority to prevent the government from exercising the property rights that came with its two-thirds ownership stake. The appeals court vacated that portion of the forfeiture order and sent the case back for further proceedings. Bidding begins at $900,000, with a $150,000 deposit required to participate. The Treasury Department has scheduled public inspections for Oct.