The Great and the Terrible: How American Businessman Gary Flom Profited From The Decency of a Russian Entrepreneur

 

Gary Flom, a well-known Russian-American businessman, and financial manager from New York, showed in the US media as a successful businessman and a genius in the automotive business. However, few people know that Flom acquired his positions and business reputation at the expense of the Russian entrepreneur AlexanderBoyko. On the territory of Russia in modern Russian information sources, the name of Gary Flom is used in combination with the words "thief", "swindler", "financial fraudster". The victim of his greed and betrayal was businessman, chairman of the Board of Directors of B2B-Center, leader of the Internet technologies industry in business, Alexander Boyko. In his work, Boyko always stood on the side of the law, strove for transparency of economic relations, for a clean business reputation. As a result, he began to be called an honest businessman in Russia. Since Boyko always plays a fair, open game and respects and trusts his partners, he never expected deception from his business partners. As a result, he was involved in a financial scam, where Gary Flom and Veniamin Nilva deceived him. They acted together against the Russian businessman.

 

Gary Flom was born on November 25, 1962, in Russia. As a boy, he lived in Vitebsk, Belarus, in the former Soviet Union Republic. In 1975, his mother and father settled in New York. Gary moved to the United States with his family and has been living there ever since.

He lived in Brooklyn, New York, before joining the United States Marine Corps in 1983. He earned a degree in business administration from the University of Maryland.

 

After discharge from military duty, Gary Flom decided to plunge into the world of business. At the age of 12, he fell in love with cars when he saw a Buick at the US Embassy in Moscow. After that, he read a lot about cars, which awakened a passion for the automotive business. Ultimately, the automotive retail trade made Flom a millionaire, not because he competently and skillfully built his business, but because he knew him very well from the inside, knew what schemes could be used to steal money. Because of this "knowledge", Gary Flom was fired after 15 years at the head of the Manhattan Automobile Company. However, the official version was going into private business.

 

The con was then President and CEO of Ford Bay Ridge dealership in Brooklyn. Flom has built partnerships with such brands like Ford, Lincoln, Mazda, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, Infiniti, Porsche, and Volvo during his career. In addition, he is also known as the former President and CEO of Jaguar Land Rover.

 

In the development of Gary Flom's business, a huge, if not a key, the role was played by his acquaintance with Veniamin Nilva, who in the early 2000s began a partnership with an honest Russian businessman Alexander Boyko and, having earned a certain degree of trust, could promote an entrepreneur from Moscow to invest significant capital in American business.

As a dealer of the products of one of the factories owned by Boyko, Nilva in 2002, as if by chance, met the owner of the business. Initially, Veniamin did not impose his society, contacts were rare, but at the same time, he always tried to show efficiency, diligence, and success in commercial affairs. Once, he asked an honest businessman to lend him $ 2 million. Boyko borrowed, and after a while, the amount was returned. The Russian businessman began to treat his new acquaintance with great confidence. Nilva's position was strengthened even more when, at his suggestion, Alexander Boyko decided to buy real estate in the United States. Veniamin Nilva, who lives in the United States permanently, took over all the preparation of the deal and, in addition, began to renovate the purchased apartment. If Boyko were in Nilva's place, he would conduct all the operations honestly and conscientiously, so he did not even have doubts about the intentions of a foreign friend. However, later it turned out that Nilva had acquired the apartment under his name and even added a couple of hundred thousand to the cost of repairs, making a fortune quite easily in this way.

 

Then there were transactions for the sale and purchase of the real estate. An honest businessman trusted his partner, and there was no apparent reason to end the relationship. In 2009, a joint account of Nilva and Boyko was opened, through which transactions for the purchase of real estate and the payment of taxes were made. The Russian businessman was misled: Nilva convinced him that, without a residency, as well as an SSN, Boyko could not open an individual account under his name. The joint account made it possible for Nilva to use Alexander's funds that were on the account without his knowledge. Millions of dollars of money were spent at the discretion of Nilva and Gary Flom, sometimes returned to the account. But control over these processes was completely with Nilva. Once Boyko noticed that part of the funds from this account was transferred to Veniamin's account. He asked him about that transaction, but Nilva did not answer, referring to the returned money over time. A share of doubt about Veniamin's decency sneaked into Boyko's head. He did not support Nilva's initiative to invest in the automobile business. It was then that he introduced the Russian entrepreneur to Flom to make his plans realistic. Of course, the result of such an acquaintance was not long in coming. Flom's influence and respectability and a luxury store in Manhattan convinced Boyko to invest in business development. Nilva so wanted to enlist Boyko's support that, along with common sense, he appealed to the pity of an honest businessman. In 2011, Alexander Boyko's foreign companion said that he was terminally ill and asked to care for his family. He called for investments in the acquisition of the Toyota Center in Miami. Veniamin emphasized that soon the business would bring huge profits, which would allow his family to live without its head. Alexander Boyko agreed and invested $ 1.2 million in the business, then another $ 800 thousand. True, Nilva's disease turned out to be common gout. Nevertheless, for the past ten years, he has been using this position for selfish purposes.

 

Gary Flom didn't invest anything. Gradually, the business developed, the construction of buildings and technical centers began, sales started, but the promised profit was not there. Instead, Boyko saw only the expense reports that Nilva and Flom provided to him.

Then Gary Flom began to cooperate more actively with an honest businessman, to be more involved in transactions and business expansion. Once there was an opportunity to purchase five franchises at once in one store in Brooklyn, paying, according to him, only $ 500 thousand. At the same time, Flom and his partner were even ready to borrow money, if only the deal took place. Boyko agreed and invested in King's Automotive, paying at the end, not $ 500,000 but $ 5.3 million.

 

After that, an offer was made to develop a store in Manhattan by investing $ 10 million in it. This was Boyko's last investment in the auto business. Flom and Nilva behaved suspiciously, arguing that everything was under their control, that not a single check went into business without the signature of the responsible persons. For some time, the swindlers even paid off the debt to Alexander Boyko in small installments.

 

However, over time, even reports on expenditures became less and less, debt repayment stopped altogether. Flom and Nilva began to independently establish contacts with potential partners, negotiated with Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Maserati, and even partially invested money from the acquired Range Rover / Jaguar. Moreover, businessmen received a salary, arguing that they were running a huge business, and their work should be paid for. The full repayment of the debt to the Russian businessman Boyko was not part of their plans.

 

Gary Flom's income during his presidency in automobile companies reached $ 1 million a month. But that was not enough. The luxurious life that Flom and Nilva were accustomed to was very expensive. During the joint business development, their existence could be called bohemian: companions attended all social events, walked the red carpet of international events and festivals, and could afford to rent a box at Lincoln Center in New York.

 

Moreover, Gary Flom's wife Svetlana, of Slavic origin (he met her in a Ukrainian bathhouse), during the financial success of her husband, showed on social networks, in particular on her Instagram page, items of unprecedented luxury: clothing collections of famous fashion designers, expensive, exclusive bags, jewelry. She was a real socialite, and Flom, according to Nilva, was bewitched by her and was ready to do anything for her.

 

After his dismissal, Gary had serious financial problems: it became unrealistic to maintain the same lifestyle and support a spouse with such high demands. So the question arises: where did Flom get the money for such a luxurious life with a young wife? It was here that financial scams with accounts and investments of Alexander Boyko helped. Knowing how to steal money from the company but fearing to do it in a huge corporation, Flom implemented schemes concerning Boyko. True, he never asked for money. Instead, he acted through Benjamin Nilva.

 

Flom's last notable job was as President of the BNF Automotive Group, which he co-founded in 2014 in New York. In 2016, many news portals published news about the huge sales of BNF. But the media was full of information about the appropriation of sales instead of paying the debt to Nissan. In addition, the automaker did not issue registration certificates to several customers who bought their vehicles from Gary Flom dealerships without receiving contributions.

Nissan provided $ 1 million in financial support to set up a dealership. However, rising construction costs meant BNF ran out of money. At one point, Flom and his business were in debt to Nissan in the amount of $ 56 million.

 

The court ruled that dealerships were to pay Nissan $ 40 million. Flom and his BNF partners filed for bankruptcy in 2017 and sold their dealerships to Jaguar and Maserati to pay off their debts. Gary Flom fled and currently lives in Saudi Arabia with the proceeds, where there are no claims against him from businessmen, authorities, or legislation.

 

This is how the conspiracy of foreign swindlers against the honest Russianbusinessman Alexander Boyko ended. Taking advantage of his honesty and decency, Flom and Nilva deceived Boyko, brought their insidious financial plans to fruition. One of the key roles was played by an honest businessman's poor knowledge of a foreign language, ignorance of the intricacies of foreign legislation, and the process of formalizing certain transactions.

Gary Flom got into the scheme of illegal actions planned in advance and thought out Veniamin Nilva. But, unfortunately, the latter only exacerbated the negative influence on the Russian entrepreneur.

 

Alexander Boyko is not shy about talking that he became a victim of financial fraud. Perhaps his openness and desire to restore justice will allow other entrepreneurs not to get into similar situations and be more aware of doing business abroad.