He walked around his villa with a $30,000 Louis Vuitton signature bike, sporty Girard-Perregaux watches and in the garage he had one collection out Ferrari. The “Madoff of the” was arrested in Oregon sneakers‘, a luxury sneaker retailer accused of making $300 million by defrauding its customers under a Ponzi scheme.
The story of one of the biggest scams in the fashion industry begins in 2013 when Michael Maleksadek, now 39, starts buying and reselling online limited edition sneakers from Nike and Yeezy, the brand of notorious rapper/designer and ex-husband of Kim Kardashian Kanye West. During the Pandemic With Covid, the retailer’s business is picking up steam and in early 2020 his website Zadeh Kicks will start selling sneakers not yet on the market for pre-order. By cashing in on unsuspecting customers, Malekzadek manages to make about $70 million from pre-sales of 600,000 pairs of Air Jordan 11 Cool Gray despite only having 6,000 in stock. A tour throughbusiness huge, which made the “Madoff of sneakers” over $300 million in a matter of years until last April, when the company went bankrupt and he also disappeared from social media.
The agent is also accused of forging $15 million worth of bank loan requests along with his girlfriend Bethany Mockerman, also 39, who is believed to be his accomplice in the Maxi scam. The federal agents who arrested him confiscated thousands of luxury items from his home estate agents some sneakers that he had bought over the years thanks to his scams. There is talk of around 100 fine watches, some worth over 400,000, jewelry and hundreds of luxury bags.
Nearly $6.4 million in cash was also seized. And in his mansion’s warehouse are over 59,780 pairs of shoes that need to be sold to cover at least part of the compensation for the mocked customers. Among them are 4,700 Yeezys, 8,500 Adidas, and 48,000 pairs of Nikes, many of which are said to be the coveted Air Jordans, which Fortune says are worth between $12 million and $20 million. “In the sneaker market, yours is a Bernie Madoff-level scam,” Michael Schneider, one of the best-known retailers of luxury sneakers in the US, told The Wall Street Journal. The corrupt financier who dreamed up the biggest Ponzi scheme in history and died in prison last year has been sentenced to 150 years in prison. His zealot may not risk such a harsh sentence, but crimes of this nature are not easily condoned in the US, and Malekzadek, who loved living surrounded by opulence, could spend the next 30 years in a cell.
Last updated: Saturday 5 November 2022 19:42
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