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Diamond District Merchants Get Prison for Staged $7M Heist

By DNAinfo Staff on May 27, 2011 4:17pm

File photo: Atul Shah, left, with lawyer Benjamin Brafman. His business partner, Mahaveer Kankariya, is at the right with his attorney Michael Bachner.
File photo: Atul Shah, left, with lawyer Benjamin Brafman. His business partner, Mahaveer Kankariya, is at the right with his attorney Michael Bachner.
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DNAinfo/John Marshall Mantel

By Shayna Jacobs

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — A pair of Diamond District merchants were sentenced to prison Friday for staging a heist straight out of the movie "Snatch" in an attempted $7 million insurance scam.

Store owners Atul Shah, 49, and Mahaveer Kankariya, 45, got 20 months in prison for insurance fraud, attempted grand larceny and falsifying business records.

They hired two robbers, who dressed in Orthodox Jewish garb, to carry out the bogus the robbery from their store on W. 46th Street on New Year's Eve 2008.

"Everyday for the rest of my life I will carry the sin of this case," said a sobbing Shah as he asked the judge for leniency. "I beg your honor for mercy."

The merchants tried to collect $7 million from Lloyd's of London by filing a fake insurance claim about the incident.

The diamond dealers could be out on work released within one year, said Michael Bachner, Kankariya's attorney.

"I believe that I am dealing with men who are basically good people who did bad things," Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Thomas Farber said, adding he found it "upsetting" that Kankariya asked his bail bondsman if he could bribe the judge in exchange for a lighter sentence.

"I'm not using it to enhance the punishment — it just kind of rocks my world, for lack of a better word," Farber said.

Kankariya's attorney, Michael Bachner, said the question was based on his understanding of the way things work in India, his native country. He insisted Kankariya "never had any intention of ever doing anything."

Prosecutors had asked for a harsher sentence considering the missing jewels were never recovered and the defendants never admitted guilt.

"These defendants repeatedly day after day ... swore to tell the truth and repeateldy lied," Assistant District Attorney Kavita Bovell said.

Benjamin Brafman, Shah's attorney, said it was a crime of "economic desperation" and "stupidity," by two men who had always done the right thing in life and were generous and hard-working.