California Biotech Tycoon Found Guilty of Orchestrating Rival's Murder (sfgate.com)
- Reference: 0179685818
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/10/06/2249240/california-biotech-tycoon-found-guilty-of-orchestrating-rivals-murder
- Source link: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/california-biotech-tycoon-found-guilty-21086871.php
> Seven years ago, Turkish national Serhat Gumrukcu, 42, of Los Angeles, was negotiating a multimillion-dollar biotech merger built off his work on a supposed HIV cure. The deal was put in jeopardy by a former business partner named Gregory Davis, 49, who had threatened to bring legal action against Gumrukcu for fraudulent activities relating to a previous failed oil commodities deal, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a news release last week. Gumrukcu, a magician-turned-scientist who admitted to buying his medical degree from a Russian university, lived in a Hollywood mansion and partied with Oscar winners and movie producers, according to [2]VTDigger . He stood to make millions from the merger of his biotech company Enochian BioSciences. [...]
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> In 2017, upon learning that Davis, a father of six from Danville, Vermont, could potentially spoil his fortune-making deal, Gumrukcu set in motion a hit on the former business partner. The murder-for-hire plot involved four men in total, prosecutors said. Gumrukcu had a close friend from Las Vegas, Berk Eratay, approach a third man, Aron Ethridge to find a hit man to kill Davis. The shooter, 37-year-old Montana man Jerry Banks, arrived at Davis' home on Jan. 6, 2018, in a vehicle fitted with flashing red and blue lights and posed as a deputy U.S. marshal. After abducting Davis, Banks shot him dead in the vehicle and left the body partially buried in a snowbank nearby.
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> Investigators soon narrowed in on Gumrukcu after discovering emails between him and Davis revealing tensions over the failed oil deal. Gumrukcu was interviewed twice by the FBI and made false statements on both occasions, federal prosecutors said. Further inspection of cellphone data, bank information and messages identified the four men involved in the kidnapping and killing of Davis.
[1] https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/california-biotech-tycoon-found-guilty-21086871.php
[2] https://vtdigger.org/2025/09/25/your-lies-die-here-murdered-mans-widow-tells-leader-of-deadly-plot-before-forgiving-his-accomplice/
magician-turned-scientist (Score:2)
More like con man continuing his trade, and kills if he doesn't get what he wants. These are they type of people the FBI, and Homeland Security should be investigating and prosecuting. Oh, and it seems like his "friends" are criminals too.
100 months? (Score:3)
The three other people, including the shooter, involved in this only got 100 months each? For orchestrating a murder?? That's 8 years, also known as fucking bullshit!
Re: (Score:2)
> The three other people, including the shooter, involved in this only got 100 months each? For orchestrating a murder?? That's 8 years, also known as fucking bullshit!
Maybe they (Eratay, Banks and Ethridge) made plea-deals in exchange for testifying against Gumrukcu. That said, 100 months does appear to be light, especially for trigger-man Banks.
Re: (Score:3)
It's rsilvergun, it doesn't matter the topic he finds a way to tie it into a failure of capitalism. If your dog dies, it's because you're a capitalist pig.
Re: (Score:2)
Dude it's exactly on topic. This entire thing we are discussing wouldn't be happening if the business in question could secure more Capital to keep it scam going.
That's because you're too fucking stupid and ignorant to understand how systems interconnect doesn't mean they don't interconnect.
But if you weren't so fucking stupid and ignorant then Trump wouldn't be president and we wouldn't be in this mess.
Re: (Score:3)
We get it bro. For everything that happens, your comment is always that it could easily have been prevented if only we'd just have communism. When I stub my toe on some furniture, you're there to remind me that if we'd been living in a Marxist utopia such a thing wouldn't have happened. After all, I wouldn't be able to have any furniture.
You don't get shit kiddo (Score:2)
If you did then we wouldn't be having this fucking conversation because none of this shit would be happening. But I can't give you a hundred IQ points so here we go.
This isn't hard numbnut. We deregulated our economy resulting in a shitload of scammers. Those scammers get unusually large and their scams can have large effects on the entire economy when they inevitably collapse.
If it was just an occasional scammer here and there that would be fine but because we have pulled back on regulations so muc