After a five-week trial before Chief United States District Judge Christina Reiss, a federal jury convicted Serhat Gumrukcu, 42, of Los Angeles, California, of murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Gumrukcu remains in jail pending sentencing, which has not been scheduled.
Gumrukcu has been held in custody since his arrest in May 2022.
According to court records and evidence presented at trial, Gumrukcu solicited the murder of Gregory Davis due to Davis’s threats of legal action related to Gumrukcu’s role in a failed oil commodities transaction.
Gumrukcu’s conviction for wire fraud stemmed from his fraudulent activities in relation to this failed oil deal.
Gumrukcu was particularly motivated to silence Davis due to his negotiations of a multimillion-dollar biotech merger involving Gumrukcu’s alleged discovery of a cure for HIV. Gumrukcu relied on his close friend, Berk Eratay, to arrange through a second intermediary, Aaron Ethridge, the hiring of a hitman to kill Davis.
Ethridge recruited Jerry Banks for the hitman role, who on January 6, 2018, posed as a Deputy U.S. Marshal and abducted Davis from his Danville, Vermont home. On January 7, 2018, Davis’s deceased body was located in a snowbank a short distance from his home.
Investigators quickly discovered emails and messaging indicating the tension between Gumrukcu and Davis over the failed oil deal, resulting in Gumrukcu being interviewed twice by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Gumrukcu made false statements during each interview. Cellphone location information, purchase records, banking documentation, emails, and messaging discovered during the investigation led to the identification of the four conspirators who caused the kidnapping and death of Davis.
Based on the jury’s verdict, Gumrukcu faces a statutorily mandated sentence of life imprisonment.
“Serhat Gumrukcu tried to hide his role in the murder of Greg Davis by paying one man to pay another man to pay the hitman, who shot and killed Greg Davis on a January night in Vermont.
“Uncovering Gumrukcu’s responsibility for this murder involved years of determined investigation by the men and women of Vermont’s United States Attorney’s Office, working closely with the FBI and the Vermont State Police,” stated Acting United States Attorney Michael P. Drescher.
Drescher also thanked the numerous law enforcement entities across the country who worked to identify Banks as the hired hitman, Ethridge and Eratay as middlemen, and Gumrukcu as the financier and benefactor of the murder scheme.
