An international crime boss at the top of an organization known for dismembering rivals with chainsaws is facing federal charges on a more mundane allegation: applying for, and receiving, a COVID-19 bailout prosecutors say he wasn’t entitled to.
Mileta Miljanić, the Bosnian-born head of “Group America,” a “brutal cocaine trafficking network” with alleged links to the Gambino crime family and at least a dozen murders to its credit, defrauded the Small Business Administration (SBA) out of more than $150,000 in economic relief funds during the early days of the pandemic, according to a felony complaint unsealed Wednesday and reviewed by The Daily Beast.
Miljanić, 62, is a U.S. citizen who lives in Queens, New York, and was once on his way to playing professional soccer for the New York Cosmos before an injury waylaid his dream, according to his lawyer. Group America, with operations in some two dozen countries, reportedly moves cocaine across the globe by the ton. The crew was formed in the 1970s and is said to have deep ties to various intelligence services as well as the Serbian secret police.
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Like his alleged former associate John Gotti, Miljanić has thus far largely avoided serious prison time. Miljanić, also known as “Mike” and “Mike Mike,” served three years in federal prison for wire fraud in the 1980s, and in 2012 he was convicted of cocaine trafficking by Italian authorities. Two years into a six-year sentence, Miljanić was granted work release and fled to the U.S., where he has lived openly ever since.
On Wednesday, Miljanić—who was already detained on a pending weapons charge, involving a gun the FBI found in the convicted felon’s nightstand drawer as they were executing a warrant in an unrelated bribery probe —appeared before a judge on Wednesday in White Plains, New York, on one count of wire fraud.
The charge against Miljanić stems from an SBA Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) application he submitted in March 2020, states an affidavit attached to the new complaint.
In it, Miljanić claimed to run a company called MDP Rebar Solutions LLC that “purports” to be in the construction business, the affidavit says. However, the feds allege it “does not appear to engage in any lawful activity and is instead a shell company through which millions of dollars are passed to members and associates of organized crime.” According to the affidavit, the company employs no one other than Miljanić, various members of his family, and the alleged consigliere of the Gambinos, identified in the affidavit only as “Individual-1.”
Miljanić claimed that MDP Rebar was bringing in more than $2 million in annual revenues. But the feds had Miljanić’s phones tapped, and subpoenaed his bank records, and say it was all a front.
Between December 2018 and May 2021, roughly $6.8 million was deposited into MDP Rebar’s three separate bank accounts, the affidavit continues. Of that, about $5.7 million came solely from a construction company owned by an alleged Gambino associate, $810,000 came from Miljanić or his family, and $202,000 came from the SBA loan.
“Based on my review of the MDP Rebar accounts, MDP Rebar does not appear to have paid any expenses that would ordinarily be associated with a rebar company,” FBI Task Force Officer William Dionne states in the affidavit. About $1.7 million of the funds were disbursed to Miljanić and his wife, daughter, and two sons, $1.5 million to a Gambino capo with convictions for racketeering and extortion, $925,000 to an alleged Gambino associate with past wire fraud convictions, $484,000 to a Gambino soldier with racketeering and murder convictions, and the remainder to a raft of other shady-seeming characters, including $10,000 to the Gambino capo’s girlfriend.
According to the feds, Miljanić was cooking the books to make it appear that MDP Rebar was paying out more than it took in, to avoid taxes. In one wiretapped phone call, Miljanić and a member of the Gambino family discussed dummying up fake expenses “for materials and stuff to make it look like you have losses,” the affidavit says.
“Do what you gotta do,” Miljanić allegedly replied.
An analysis of MDP Rebar’s financial records apparently turned up rather obvious anomalies. More than 100 payments for “supplies and materials” and “equipment rentals” totaling nearly $900,000 were listed on the company’s general ledger, the affidavit explains.
But MDP Rebar’s bank records didn’t reflect any payments to the listed supply companies. Instead, the affidavit says, the funds went to Miljanić and his wife, who used a portion of the money to pay off $85,000 in American Express bills.
Miljanić has already pleaded guilty to the existing weapons charge. In a letter to the court last month asking for leniency at his sentencing, Miljanić’s wife, Rada, said that her husband “takes [his imprisonment] very hard, being unable to be with his family, especially with grandkids who he loves the most, in the same time during this corona period which was difficult even for the free people. The witch hunt for him that goes on is not correct and human, because he is a man who is loved and reputable in Serbian [sic] and New York community, known only for helping people, and not threaten [sic].”
In his appearance Wednesday on the wire fraud charge, Miljanić was denied bail by Magistrate Judge Andrew E. Krause. Miljanić is due back in court on June 6. His attorney, Lawrence R DiGiansante, did not respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
