In testimony today, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein told members of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism that cybercriminals are posing “ongoing threats” to the U.S. information and financial infrastructure.
The threats are posed by “nation-states, criminals, and terrorists who exploit our pervasive dependency on information technology to misappropriate or destroy information, steal money, and threaten basic services, including those provided by critical infrastructures,” Weinstein told the panel.
“We face the challenges of organized crime, botnets, identity theft, and carding, to name just a few,” Weinstein said.
“The massive proceeds from these online crimes create another troubling issue,” he said. “It is too soon to say where that money ends up, but the risk that it could be used to influence foreign governments, distort foreign justice systems, and fund terrorists cannot be ignored.”
Jason 'Bo' Alan Beckman's Florida Ponzi property has a screened-in, heated pool and spa, according to court filings.
As alleged Ponzi palaces go, Jason ‘Bo’ Alan Beckman’s Florida property is hardly the gaudiest. Even so, the 11-room home in Palm City has features and amenities many Americans only dream about.
But one group of Americans — victims of the Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme — are likely only to have only bad dreams about the property. They are out millions of dollars as a result of a massive fraud in which Beckman allegedly played a big role.
The two-story, five-bedroom, five-bathroom home built in 2005 is situated near a golf course and equestrian facility, according to newly filed documents in the Beckman civil-fraud case. Receiver R.J. Zayed is seeking an order that would turn the property back over to Beckman and his wife because the home — despite its amenities — likely cannot be sold for what is owed on the $707,301 mortgage.
Keeping the property could create a drain on the receivership estate, Zayed argued.
Chief U.S. District Judge Michael J. Davis asked last week that an appraisal be done on the property. The appraisal now has been filed with the court, and the appraiser reported that the home is worth $540,000, about $167,301 less than what is owed.
Other court filings suggest the property may be worth even less. The SEC described Beckman in March as a “leading” figure in the Cook scheme, alleging that he raised about $47.3 million of the $194 million gathered in the overall fraud.
Floor plan of the Beckman Florida home.
Cook is serving a 25-year sentence in federal prison.
Beckman used $1.49 million of investors’ money for payments “toward the purchase” of luxury homes in Minneapolis, Texas and Florida, the SEC charged. The Minneapolis home already is in foreclosure, and the Florida home is situated in an upscale neighborhood trying to make a comeback after the state’s foreclosure glut caused property prices to plunge, according to court filings.
The Beckman Florida game room.
Any buyer who emerges to purchase Beckman’s Florida property will find that it has twin garages with enough floor space to hold four cars, according to court filings.
The home also features a yard with palm trees, a driveway built with colored pavers, a screened-in pool and spa, a screened-in “summer kitchen” and porch, central air, a well-appointed interior kitchen, a dining room, a living room, a family room, a game room, a den, a showy staircase, marble floors, a laundry room and other amenities.
Some of the Ponzi victims have been described in court filings as penniless.
BULLETIN: UPDATED 8:48 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.) Steven Byers, the president and chief executive officer of WexTrust Capital LLC, has been sentenced to 160 months in federal prison for his role in an alleged $255 million Ponzi and fraud scheme that cost investors millions of dollars.
Byers, 48, of Oakbrook, Ill., was sentenced by Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Chin, formerly a U.S. district judge, was nominated to the appeals court by President Obama and received unanimous approval (98-0) in the U.S. Senate in the months after he sentenced Bernard Madoff in June 2009 to 150 years in federal prison for his $65 billion Ponzi scheme.
Chin also ordered Byers to make $7.7 million in restitution to victims and ordered the forfeiture of $9.2 million. Byers also will be on supervised probation for three years after he serves his prison sentence. The scheme largely was targeted at Orthodox Jews, according to court filings.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara described the sentence imposed by Chin against Byers as properly severe.
“Steven Byers used smoke and mirrors to defraud his investors out of millions of dollars,” Bharara said. “But his scheme was ultimately exposed for the sham that it was, and now he will be punished severely for his crimes.”
Prosecutors specifically charged Byers with fleecing investors in a $9.2 million, private-placement offering that claimed the money would be used to “purchase and operate seven commercial properties that were leased to the United States General Services Administration (GSA).”
“The seven GSA properties, however, were never purchased,” prosecutors said. “Instead, funds raised from investors were diverted for other purposes.”
Chin is scheduled to sentence Joseph Shereshevsky, Byers’ co-defendant, on May 13. The SEC said in August 2008 that Shereshevsky was a convicted felon who had been arrested for bank fraud in the 1990s.
It is common in the Ponzi universe for securities swindlers to start new schemes. Some fraudsters have hatched new schemes while on probation for previous swindles. Others have hatched new schemes from their jail cells.
In testimony today, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein told members of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism that cybercriminals are posing “ongoing threats” to the U.S. information and financial infrastructure.
