Pawn shop in Broward sold stolen goods online, deputies say. 9 employees charged (2025)

Seven employees of a South Florida pawn shop were jailed Tuesday as part of a three-year investigation into an organized theft operation that authorities say cost national retailers millions of dollars over several years.

The staffers, who worked for U.S. Pawn, are accused of buying large amounts of stolen goods from organized retail thieves and reselling them online. The items included everyday products like medications, beauty supplies, electronics and tools — many of which were still in their original packaging, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office.

One of the detectives who worked the case, Sgt. Rich Rossman, told the Miami Herald that the people stealing the items are not shoplifters who may be grabbing goods out of perceived necessity, but rather highly organized professionals who make large profits through their illegitimate work.

“It’s their 9-to-5 job. They go out and steal and find a fencing operation to finance their not-so-honest day’s work,” Rossman said.

The thieves are known as “boosters” in the trade, and consist of individuals, networks of people and even street gangs.

“Unfortunately, it’s a very lucrative criminal enterprise,” Rossman said, noting that it not only drives up prices for consumers because stores factor in the theft to their retail costs, but also costs the state through loss of sales tax revenue.

“It has a huge impact to all of us,” Rossman said, noting the problem is also why consumers have to get a clerk to buy everyday items like deodorant, razor blades and tooth brushes because stores have to put them in cases so they don’t get stolen.

According to the Broward Sheriff’s Office, the stolen merchandise came from well-known stores including CVS, Walgreens, Home Depot, Publix and Walmart. Investigators say the thefts took place across Broward County and other parts of Florida.

Detectives began looking into the case in 2022 and found that the operation was highly organized, with U.S. Pawn’s owner, Igor Melomed, allegedly at the top of the scheme. Employees at multiple levels were involved in buying and reselling the stolen items.

The BSO’s investigation included surveillance of the shop and sending in undercover deputies to fence goods.

Rossman said that so many boosters were coming into Melomed’s store on any given day that an undercover cop bringing in items was told to wait outside because employees were too busy sorting through the volume of stolen goods they received. He said people were using wagons and trash bags to deliver the items to the store.

“While they were waiting, they were joking and talking about the tricks of the trade, where they went to steal and how they do it,” Rossman said.

Detectives estimate some groups of boosters cleared hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of the investigation.

In December 2023, authorities raided two U.S. Pawn locations in Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale, seizing over 50 pallets of stolen goods valued at more than $750,000. Investigators said some thieves made multiple sales of stolen items in a single day.

When the investigation began in February 2022, CVC’s Retail Theft Unit called the sheriff’s office to report it was working with other national retailers like Home Depot, Walgreens, Publix and Winn Dixie looking into “high-level boosters” in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, according to an arrest warrant for one of the defendants, Natalia Kudlina.

That led to a detective scoping out US Pawn’s Hollywood location and observing people bringing in bags full of over-the-counter products, health and beauty products and tools.

An employee would then bring the items to an empty store in a strip mall located behind the shop with boarded up windows that detectives say was being used as a makeshift warehouse for the stolen goods, according to the warrant.

The items were then sold on the online marketplace, the warrant states.

In September 2022, a detective working undercover brought in to the US Pawn Hollywood store $560 worth of Olay products in 20 boxes, along with 24 boxes worth $959 of FemiClear feminine care products, according to the warrant.

Another one of the defendants, Natalia Khodyreva, accepted the Olay products, but not the FemiClear products because they are only sold by authorized dealers, according to the warrant.

The detective wrote in the warrant that earlier in the year, he brought in Olay products that were secured in an acrylic, anti-theft case. Kudelina, aware the items were stolen, “manipulated the security devices to ensure that they could be defeated, and the items could be removed,” before making the deal to buy them from the undercover detective, according to the warrant.

“This deal was part of a long-term operation where multiple pawn brokers were accepting stolen merchandise on behalf of U.S. Pawn,” the detective wrote in his report.

So far, nine employees have been arrested, including seven on Tuesday. The investigation is still ongoing. It wasn’t immediately clear if they had retained attorneys.

Those arrested, per BSO:

▪ Igor Melomed, 46 – racketeering

▪ Marie Turene, 34 – racketeering, dealing in stolen property

▪ William LaCroix, 58 – racketeering

▪ Lyndon Johnson, 37 – racketeering, dealing in stolen property (3 counts)

▪ Edward Ibragimov, 39 – racketeering

▪ Kevin Gilyard, 37 – racketeering, dealing in stolen property

▪ Luis Bustos Diaz, 36 – racketeering

▪ Natalia Kudelina, 49 – dealing in stolen property

▪ Natalia Khodyreva, 40 – dealing in stolen property (2 counts)