Any New Yorker who has ever moved has experienced the transient terror of putting all one’s belongings into a moving truck, sweating out the precarious hours poised between one apartment and another, calling neither home.

Federal prosecutors say a group of scammers made money off that nervous moment, bilking hundreds of trusting customers by offering cheap moving estimates and then demanding exorbitant fees in exchange for returning their worldly possessions.

The scheme, orchestrated by the now-fugitive owner of several Brooklyn moving companies, resulted in guilty verdicts on Monday for two midlevel employees, Kristy Mak and Andre Prince, each on a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The case was brought by Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

Ms. Mak, 34, and Mr. Prince, 45, were both employed by the lead defendant, Yakov Moroz, who this year took his devotion to moving to extremes by absconding while free on bond.