Years on the lam at an end

By KEVIN GRAHAM, Times Staff Writer
Published August 21, 2007

TAMPA - More than 40 years ago, Joseph Adjmi jumped bail on a 10-year federal prison sentence for mail fraud.

Relatives told attorneys they hadn't heard from him and assumed he had died, although he was only 28.

Then earlier this year, he turned up in the hands of Cuban officials, who accused him of fraud. They sent him back to the United States and into federal custody.

Adjmi's Tampa attorney, Gregory Kehoe, won't say how he spent the last four decades.

But his attorney in Israel, Mordechai Tzivin, told the Miami Herald in May that Adjmi lived mostly in Europe after vanishing from Tampa and made his way to Cuba two years ago. While there, he was accused of carrying a false Israeli passport and nearly $100,000 and put in prison.

On Monday, Adjmi, 70, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark A. Pizzo in Tampa and pleaded guilty to jumping bail. For now, he remains at the Orient Road jail without bond. U.S. District Judge Susan C. Bucklew will sentence him on that charge in the next two months.

"He's ready to deal with it," Kehoe said.

Any sentence Bucklew imposes, which could be up to 5 years in prison, will run concurrently with the mail fraud sentence.

Judges and attorneys say Adjmi's case is one of the oldest open cases being prosecuted at the federal courthouse in Tampa.

"It's the oldest case I've had to deal with in a long time," said Kehoe, who was in elementary school when Adjmi first faced a federal judge.

The Adjmi family emigrated from the Middle East to the United States before World War II and settled in New York, where they sold rugs and tablecloths. In 1952, the family moved to South Florida and opened linen shops in Miami and Miami Beach.

Prosecutors alleged the family insured fake paintings and vases from Asia and the Middle East, and then collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in claims after a suspicious 1958 fire at their store. In 1960, Adjmi, along with his father, Leon, and brother, Charles, was indicted on insurance fraud charges related to the fire. Authorities later added the mail fraud charges, accusing the men of using the Postal Service to obtain fraudulent insurance payments.

While charges were originally filed in Miami, the Adjmis' case was moved to Tampa because of high publicity.

On Nov. 1, 1963, a Tampa federal jury convicted the three men of mail fraud, and on April 27, 1964, Leon and Joseph were convicted of additional mail fraud and conspiracy charges. Charles was acquitted in that case and later got his 1963 conviction reversed on appeal.

Leon and Joseph Adjmi disappeared together in 1965. Leon reportedly died in the early 1990s.

Times researcher John Martin contributed to this story, which used information from the Miami Herald. Kevin Graham can be reached at 813 226-3433 or kgraham@sptimes.com.

[Last modified August 21, 2007, 00:08:49]