CLEVELAND, Ohio — Two East Cleveland brothers who pretended to be Middle Eastern royalty and ran $21 million worth of scams were sentenced Tuesday to more than two decades in prison.
The East Cleveland public official they bribed along the way was sentenced to slightly more than eight years behind bars.
Former East Cleveland chief of staff Michael Smedley gave the brothers — Zubair and Muzzammil Al Zubair — the cover they used to carry out several schemes, including one in which they bilked a Chinese investor out of about $17.8 million by telling her that they owned the vacant Nela Park industrial complex…