The Case Of The Gym Bag That Squealed

It was the kind of oversight that is, usually, pretty harmless. A "Marina Shap" failed to pay the rent on her cubicle at Manhattan Mini-Storage in the SoHo section of New York. When the manager opened the bin last January, however, he found an intriguing assortment of knickknacks: Two 9-millimeter pistols, a 12-gauge shotgun, and, the FBI asserts in a court filing, "various documents in a box and gym bag."

The fluke discovery of the guns was hardly earth-shattering in gun-happy New York. But the documents drew the attention of the FBI's Russian organized crime squad. According to a sealed criminal complaint filed with the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn and obtained by BUSINESS WEEK, the FBI maintains that the mini-storage document trove sets forth a tale of stock manipulation and money laundering. Allegedly involved are more than 30 foreign shell companies and bank accounts that, the complaint maintains, were used to launder the proceeds from illegal stock sales during 1994 and 1995.