Men Admit To Fake Elmhurst Robbery; Supposed Loot Found In Safe: Police

ELMHURST, IL – Two men admitted to Elmhurst officers earlier this year that they had lied about being robbed of $1.5 million to $2 million worth of jewelry, police said.

Police said they later found the gems in a safe at one of the men's homes.

Patch obtained the police report through a public records request.

In the early evening of Feb. 22, the suspects – Pezhman Gilani Yahyavi, 46, of Glendale Heights, and Mahmood Bashang, 30, of Naperville – were driving from a jewelry show in Rosemont when they said the holdup happened, police said.

The older man is the younger one's father-in-law.

The alleged robbery occurred near Grand Avenue and Commerce Court.

The men said they were driven off the road by armed men. They said they suspected the purported robbers followed them after seeing their jewelry at the show.

But police said they found inconsistencies in their stories.

One major gap was that they said they continuously drove all the way from Rosemont. But through phone records, police said they found the men's 2013 Ford Escape stationary for five minutes close to the site of the alleged robbery. Neither man mentioned that fact.

Pressed about this, the younger man became emotional and told officers that his father-in-law had planned for two days to stage the robbery.

The younger man said the five-minute stop occurred because they were arguing about whether to go through with the plan, according to the police report.

The older man was struggling financially and needed money to pay for his inventory, the younger man told officers. The father-in-law only made $5,000 to $6,000 at the show when he expected to receive 10 times that amount, police said.

When informed of his son-in-law's confession, the older man said the younger man was not a liar. But the older man stuck to his story, insisting he was rich and repeatedly demanding that officers show video proof of his son-in-law's confession, police said.

The father-in-law later said he would accept the younger man's statements as truth, but would not provide any information in his own words.

The younger man told officers that all the jewelry in question was in a safe at the older man's home.

Later in his interview, the father-in-law began to waver, denying the jewelry was in the safe but then admitting it was, police said.

The older man acknowledged they had started paperwork to collect on insurance for the purported loss, police said.

The man appeared stressed, defeated and embarrassed, according to the report.

"(The father-in-law) changed his story again and claimed he had been robbed of the jewelry, only moments later to say he had not been robbed at gunpoint but that 'God' knows what happened," the report said.

When the older man opened the safe, he was asked whether the jewelry inside was the purported stolen merchandise.

"Yeah, if you say that, yeah," the man was quoted as saying.

A grand jury indicted the men in early April. They were charged with felony disorderly conduct by filing a false crime report