Man Claimed to Have Discovered Cure for HIV. Now He's Going to Prison for Orchestrating His Rival's Murder By Sean Neumann

Serhat Gumrukcu had seemingly made plenty of moves as he climbed his way up through the world: Once a magician, the Turkish national purchased a medical degree from a Russian university, moved to Hollywood and began negotiating multimillion-dollar deals with biotech companies claiming he had found a cure for HIV.

But Gumrukcu, 42, failed to pull off his most dastardly trick.

In April, Gumrukcu’s lavish life came crashing back to reality when he was found guilty of orchestrating a deadly hit on a former business partner who threatened to unveil the slippery Los Angeles businessman’s fraudulent past. Gumrukcu was sentenced to life in prison over what federal authorities called a “murder-for-hire conspiracy” that resulted in his former business partner Gregory Davis, a married father of six with another baby on the way, being left for dead in a snowy ditch in early January 2018.

The magician-turned-businessman – who reportedly partied with Oscar-winning actors and other celebrities at his Hollywood home, according to The Wall Street Journal – had been convicted of three felonies. According to the local VTDigger in Vermont, Gumrukcu was convicted of one felony for orchestrating a murder-for-hire, another for conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and a third felony for conspiracy to commit wire fraud. 

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice announced in a news release that authorities had finally wrapped up the years-long criminal case surrounding Gumrukcu when the three other men involved in Davis’ death were sentenced to prison. 

Berk Eratay, Gumrukcu’s close friend, was sentenced to 110 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release for his role in receiving directions from Gumrukcu and reaching out to another friend, Aron Ethridge, to find a hitman. Ethridge was sentenced to 140 months in prison followed by five years of supervised release for hiring Jerry Banks to travel to Vermont, where Davis lived, to kill the 49-year-old businessman.

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According to VTDigger, Banks told the court during his trial that he posed as a U.S. Marshall and parked a car outside Davis’ home with flashing red and blue lights to mimic a police vehicle. Banks said he told Davis he was under arrest for racketeering, placed him in handcuffs, and then drove him 10 miles away from his family’s home to a pull-off along the road where he then shot Davis in the back and the head, killing him, and leaving him in the snow where his body was discovered the next day.

Federal officials said in their release last week that investigators “quickly” uncovered the connection between Davis and Gumrukcu after reviewing emails and messages between the two former business partners, which indicated there was a growing “tension” between the two men over a “failed oil deal” they worked on in the past. He was arrested in May 2022, VTDigger reported.

“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,” federal authorities said. “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 told the court during his trial that he told “so many lies” over his years in business that he could not remember them all, according to VTDigger.

In court, Gumrukcu was also forced to face Davis’ wife Melissa, who gave birth to their seventh child shortly after her husband’s murder.

“I stand here today not only as a widow, but as the mother of seven children whose lives were shattered the night Greg was taken from us,” she told Gumrukcu, according to VTDigger. “You thought you could silence my husband, but your lies die here in this courtroom.”