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Invisiblevandago
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Authorities say an East Cleveland man pretended to be a prince, duped city leaders and stole $10 million
    #28665633 - 02/18/24 02:13 PM (4 months, 5 days ago)

https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2024/02/a-royal-con-how-authorities-say-an-east-cleveland-man-pretended-to-be-a-prince-duped-city-leaders-and-stole-10-million.html?outputType=amp

CLEVELAND, Ohio— Zubair Al Zubair boasted about marrying a princess and his vast business and family connections to world leaders. He had lots of cash and lived in an opulent Bratenahl mansion overlooking Lake Erie.

He even served as East Cleveland Mayor Brandon King’s international economics adviser, giving back to his hometown.

But that veneer of success and prominence came crashing down earlier this month with a federal indictment accusing Al Zubair of leveraging his many lies to trick two people into giving him $10 million for bogus businesses.


Al Zubair wasn’t a prince. He had no connections to any members of the royal family in the United Arab Emirates. Authorities say he lied, cheated and stole to get his fancy digs, a suite at Cleveland Browns Stadium, access to private jets, a gaudy collection of watches and a stockpile of guns.

Court records indicate that Al Zubair even duped King, who unwittingly let him carry out one grift in his office and later gave Al Zubair the honorary adviser title.

Al Zubair, 41, and his brother, Muzzammil, 30, now face nearly two dozen federal charges of wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering and harboring a fugitive. Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer reached out to their attorneys for comment.

Former East Cleveland City Councilman Ernest Smith, who was a member of council at the time, said he had no idea the city handed out that title and had never heard of the brothers.

But he said East Cleveland’s dire financial straits make it vulnerable to anyone dangling the promise of new business in a city that has been in fiscal emergency for 30 of the last 36 years.


“That’s what happens, I guess, when you’re desperate,” said Smith, who was recalled from his post in 2022. “You’ll believe anyone who you think might be able to bring in some money.”

Failed businesses, evictions

The brothers grew up in East Cleveland, barely making an impression on neighbors. Most, however, knew Muzzammil’s father, a longtime youth coordinator at the city’s rec center.

Back then, their names were Zubair Razzaq and Muzzammil Muhammad, half-brothers who shared the same mother.

“They pretty much grew up poor, grew up here,” said Justyn Anderson, a former assistant clerk of East Cleveland City Council. “Their father worked in the rec center for years. He was well-known in the community.”

Zubair Al Zubair left East Cleveland in the early 2000s for Chicago, where he worked as a cab driver.

He later opened a coffee shop, LITH Café, that quickly failed. In less than a year, he owed more than $9,000 in unpaid electric bills and $18,000 in unpaid rent, according to court records.

Dmitriy Bushmakin bought the business after Zubair put it up for sale on Craig’s List, the now shuttered classifieds website. Bushmakin said Zubair was smart and charming and remembered Al Zubair had befriended a group of Chicago artists.


“I got the impression the restaurant business was too small-scale for him,” Bushmakin said. “He was a bigger-scale thinker. He seemed like a decent guy, but I think his head was in the clouds with his projects.”

In 2008, Al Zubair left for the United Arab Emirates. He worked his way up to CEO at AWGAL Investments, a Dubai-based financial company. He helped launch chains of Wingstop and Mooyah Burger restaurants in the wealthy Middle Eastern country.

Return to East Cleveland

Al Zubair came home in 2020, and he teamed up with his brother to work on their own business — Dubai Bridge Investments — and began launching ventures that caught the FBI’s attention.

He started telling people that he married into a UAE royal family and that he had connections to massively wealthy and influential investors, rulers, politicians and rich family members across the globe.

Al Zubair also struck up “controlling” romantic relationships with investors to make it less likely they would challenge his actions while he swindled them, prosecutors said.


In 2021, as authorities say their schemes ramped up, the brothers changed their surnames to Al Zubair.

That’s also the name of a massive business conglomerate based in the Middle East country of Oman called the Zubair Corp., a conglomerate of some 60 businesses and one of the largest in the country.

The name change and Al Zubair’s use of the self-referential title of “His Excellency” caused a stir in 2021 when Dubai Bridge Investments teamed up with ADM Energy, an oil and gas investment company, to buy a stake of an oilfield in Nigeria.

Two months after the project’s initial announcement, ADM had to walk back some of its initial information in a message to investors.

ADM, in a statement, said Al Zubair was “not connected to the Al Zubair family in Oman” and that ADM had been advised that Al Zubair’s use of the title “His Excellency” “relates to social and cultural adoption rather than it having been awarded in connection with a senior governmental, or such other, position.”

ADM and its former CEO did not return messages seeking comment.


The federal indictment does not list the ADM oilfield deal by name, but the timing lines up with the earliest scheme the brothers are accused of, the swindling of nearly $1 million from a former girlfriend of Al Zubair’s who lived in the UAE.

About a week after the initial announcement of the ADM-Dubai Bridge deal, Al Zubair reached out to the woman and told her that if she invested $4 million in an oilfield deal he was working on, she would make $9 million by the end of the year, according to the indictment.

The woman wired him $860,875. The brothers lost some of the money in bad investments and pocketed the rest. The woman later asked repeatedly about her investment, but she was ignored, prosecutors said.

About the same time, the brothers lied on applications for Small Business Administration’s COVID-19 relief loans, saying they ran restaurants, according to the indictment. They received about $24,700, the court filing says.

They turned around and spent the money on airfare, a high-end hotel in Cleveland, restaurants, purchases at Saks Fifth Avenue and the Cleveland Aquarium, the indictment said.


Nela Park

Not long after, in about July 2021, the brothers embarked on their most audacious scheme, according to the charges.

They sought out the owner of a Chinese cryptocurrency mining business. With the practice outlawed in China, the woman was looking for new business opportunities.

Cryptocurrency mining involves the complicated process of crypto deals. It takes hundreds or thousands of computers called miners, a cool environment and cheap electricity to make it profitable.

Al Zubair told the woman that he owned Nela Park, the mass of buildings in East Cleveland that in 1913 became the first industrial park in the United States.

He even took her on a tour of it on July 29, 2021.

Six days later, Al Zubair set up a contract signing in King’s office in East Cleveland City Hall. King, Law Director Willa Hemmons and Chief of Staff Michael Smedley and others from the city stood by and watched the Chinese investor ink a $3 million contract with the brothers, the indictment said.

The contract called for $1 million, then the rest after the project got rolling. But Al Zubair convinced the woman about a month later to pay the remaining $2 million, the indictment said.


The brothers spent most of the money on themselves, according to prosecutors.

Months later, Al Zubair dangled a new prospect: His family would pay her $33 million if she invested more in the project. She sent him $160,000, prosecutors said.

He later leveraged his $33 million promise to try and convince her to send 2,000 more miners to East Cleveland, after she had already sent about 1,000.

Al Zubair told her that he needed to display them to get public support from East Cleveland’s mayor and council, for Ohio congressional leaders and for Gov. Mike DeWine.

“They are for showing proof to mayor and governor to give excellent support and pricing for electricity and many other supports. This is how I get 33 million to arrive,” Al Zubair said.

Over the next month, he stole 1,067 miners and sold them to a Canadian company for $6.2 million, according to the indictment.

When the investor pressed Al Zubair about the equipment, he sent her $800,000 and ignored her from there.

Moving to Bratenahl

The indictment indicates that as the brothers were wrapping up the cryptocurrency mining scheme, they used altered financial documents to make it look like they had more money than they did, using the records to get leases on fancy homes.


They both struck out for the suburbs in March 2022. Al Zubair’s younger brother rented a Pepper Pike home for $6,000 a month. There, he bought 31 guns and a dozen expensive watches, according to court records.

Al Zubair moved into the $1.6 million Bratenahl mansion he rented from a Cleveland Clinic doctor.

During his 17 months there, Al Zubair amassed some 52 guns and 27 expensive watches made by Rolex, Audemars Piguet, Patek Phillipe and Richard Mille.

And for two weeks in the summer of 2023, he stashed a fugitive drug dealer, Kelvin Bedell, in the mansion, authorities said.

Back to East Cleveland

Shortly after Al Zubair started living in Bratenahl, he went back to East Cleveland City Hall.

This time, he signed a memorandum of understanding with King to become the city’s official international economic adviser.

The memo said King sought Al Zubair’s help to attract foreign investors to revitalize the poorest city in Ohio because it was unable to do so on its own. The city would allow Al Zubair to raise money on its behalf, and it would give Al Zubair any financial, infrastructure and demographic data he needed to lure investors.


The position was voluntary, and the position was to last until Aug. 3, 2025, the memo says.

In East Cleveland, the indictment mentioning King and the suspected scammers’ use of City Hall left some angered.

How the brothers came to use the mayor’s office for the $3 million contract signing and why King decided to give him a role in the city remains unclear.

King did not respond to multiple messages. Neither did Hemmons. King’s chief of staff, Smedley, refused to talk about it, vaguely blaming “the media,” though he issued a statement on the social media site Nextdoor.

Smedley’s statement said that Muzzammil’s father introduced his son and son’s half-brother to King.

The longtime city employee told officials Al Zubair had married into the royal family in Dubai and wanted to help bring resources to their native city, according to Smedley’s post. Attempts to reach Muzzammil’s father were unsuccessful.

Smedley said that the brothers told city officials about the talks about the cryptocurrency business at Nela Park.


The brothers even introduced them to the Chinese investor — and an alleged princess, Smedley said.

“Their scheme was extremely elaborate,” he wrote.

He said the city never paid the brothers.

“Unfortunately, the circumstances wasn’t what they presented,” Smedley wrote. “They were capable of swindling more than just East Cleveland, their scheme was international. I personally apologize for bringing bad publicity to the city and to our residents.”

Adam Ferrise covers federal courts at cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. You can find his work here.

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OfflineMickalopagus
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Re: Authorities say an East Cleveland man pretended to be a prince, duped city leaders and stole $10 million [Re: vandago]
    #28665671 - 02/18/24 02:38 PM (4 months, 5 days ago)

Wow dude, quite a story. Cleveland WTF???


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Invisiblevandago
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Re: Authorities say an East Cleveland man pretended to be a prince, duped city leaders and stole $10 million [Re: Mickalopagus]
    #28666537 - 02/19/24 08:43 AM (4 months, 4 days ago)

I’m not even sure how a scammer could get this far. Scammers target all shapes and sizes it seems. Cleveland is notorious for this kinda stuff, but I hadn’t seen it on a level like this before.

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OfflineCannabischarlie
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Re: Authorities say an East Cleveland man pretended to be a prince, duped city leaders and stole $10 million [Re: vandago]
    #28666689 - 02/19/24 10:59 AM (4 months, 4 days ago)

Quote:

vandago said:
I’m not even sure how a scammer could get this far. Scammers target all shapes and sizes it seems. Cleveland is notorious for this kinda stuff, but I hadn’t seen it on a level like this before.





This first sentence says it all. How does it even begin to reach this level?

Maybe we need more checks and balances for this kind of thing.


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