Woman accused of conning businessmen had previous convictions

A woman fraudster who last week was denied bail for swindling two Maltese businessmen out of nearly €200,000, had already been jailed on similar charges abroad.

According to the International Chamber of Commerce, which runs the fraud investigation bureau (FIB), Eva Aydelman of San Gwann was first jailed in 2003 for mortgage fraud and illegal immigration.

Aydelman, 50, is of Tajik nationality and is married to a former Israeli Defence Forces soldier, Simon Aydelman, 53, of Russian origin, who in April was charged with firing a shot from a semi-automatic pistol at his wife in their San Gwann home.

She was this week accused of misappropriating the money from two businessmen on the pretext of her acting as an intermediary between the men and the China Construction Bank.

In 2013, law enforcement officials in Merseyside, UK, prosecuted Aydelman, then posing as ‘Lady Geraldine Travers’, an alias she was said to have appropriated from “the identity of a deceased Irish infant”.

In court, she had pleaded guilty to obtaining services and property by deception and had another two years added to her original sentence of one year. 

An expert witness from the International Chamber of Commerce’s financial investigation bureau (FIB) played a key role in winning the conviction, for a scam that involved an insurance financial guarantee bond that had been constructed entirely from scratch by Aydelman.

Police discovered that Aydelman sold two of these bonds, each with a face value of US $5 million, to two Czech lawyers who paid a total of US $620,000. In order to dupe them, she travelled by private jet to the Czech Republic, hoping to give the illusion of a successful businesswoman conducting business on behalf of a credible bank.

FIB’s role was to discover that the firm listed as the issuer of the bonds, the General People’s Insurance Company, had been defunct since 1999, after its licence was revoked by the Slovak Republic’s ministry of finance.

Maltese fraud

Ayldeman was this week accused of having convinced the businessmen to open bank accounts in Hong Kong and insurance policies for a €17.5 million credit facility. But she was later found to have allegedly reproduced their signatures for a loan facility that had not been taken out.

She pleaded not guilty to fraud, misappropriation, forgery, making use of forged documents and with acting as a financial institution or intermediary when not in possession of the requisite licence.

Her defence lawyer, Roberto Montalto told the court the woman had strong ties with the island and a clean conviction sheet. “Aydelman stands charged here because of a financial transaction gone wrong… Before complaining to the Commissioner of Police, the injured party made no attempt to retrieve the money owed through the civil courts.” 

Aydelman appeared to lose consciousness towards the end of the sitting, slumping into the arms of a young woman who is thought to be a close relative. She was taken to hospital by ambulance after her arraignment.