Georgian former boxing champion Avtandil Khurtsidze has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for working as the “chief enforcer” for an “elite” criminal enterprise.<\/p>\n
He was convicted in June in New York of racketeering and wire fraud conspiracy.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said the 38-year-old boxer had “substantial influence” in the criminal underworld as part of a Soviet Union crime gang.<\/p>\n
They said Khurtsidze used violence in service of the group’s activities.<\/p>\n
He and his associates, known as the Shulaya Enterprise, were blamed for crimes across the US including extortion, wire fraud, illegal gambling and operating a brothel in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
Many of the crew’s activities were based in New York but they also operated in other major cities as well as abroad,\u00a0a justice department statement said<\/a>.<\/p>\n Officials say most of its members were born in the former Soviet Union, with strong ties to Georgia, where the boxer was born.<\/p>\n Khurtsidze was caught on film twice carrying out assaults, with prosecutors describing him as a “heavyweight enforcer” for the group’s members and leadership.<\/p>\n He was also accused of participating in a complex fraud scheme to predict casino slot machines algorithms, which involved kidnapping a software engineer in Las Vegas in 2014.<\/p>\n On top of his decade federal jail sentence, the Georgian boxer was given two further years supervision on release.<\/p>\n “Thanks to our dedicated law enforcement partners around the globe, Khurtsidze’s reign of extortion and violence has been halted,” US attorney Geoffrey Berman said in a statement.<\/p>\n Khurtsidze held the interim WBO middleweight title in 2017.<\/p>\n His last professional fight was against British boxer Tommy Langford in April 2017, which he won.<\/p>\n A later bout against Billy Joe Sanders was cancelled after Khurtsidze was arrested<\/a>\u00a0along with more than 30 others in a swoop against the organised crime syndicate.<\/p>\n Following his conviction, his former promoter Lou DiBella criticised the boxer for squandering his career.<\/p>\n “He let many people down who believed in him, but no one more than himself. Just a waste, and it’s all on him for choosing the dark side,”\u00a0Mr DiBella told ESPN<\/a>.<\/p>\n Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"