Scott Rothstein

UPDATED 4:51 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) A convicted felon who emerged from prison and almost immediately launched a $1 million fraud scheme known as PPSN threatened to prosecute and sue a consumer who had filed an online complaint, federal prosecutors said. Although the threat caused the consumer to withdraw the complaint against Philip Pestrichello, Pestrichello’s bid [...]

Some of the investors in the Trevor Cook/Pat Kiley Ponzi scheme are none too pleased with Cook’s plea deal, which may place a ceiling of 25 years on any prison sentence he receives while tens of millions of dollars remain missing. One investor has told the PP Blog that a group of investors is seeking [...]

Question: What’s the second-largest Ponzi scheme in the news in South Florida this week? Answer: The alleged $300 million Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Milowe Allen Brost, Gary Allen Sorenson and Bradley Dean Regier of Calgary; Ward K. Capstick, a Canadian citizen who lives in Snohomish, Wash; Larry Lee Adair of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Martin [...]

BULLETIN: Nevin K. Shapiro, the founder and president of Capitol Investments USA Inc., surrendered to authorities this morning after being charged both criminally and civilly in an alleged $900 million Ponzi and fraud scheme in south Florida and elsewhere, the SEC said. Shapiro, 41, is a prominent Miami Beach businessman and philanthropist in the wholesale [...]

A federal judge has ordered a Florida man to spend nearly 16 years in prison and pay $16.7 million in restitution for fleecing investors in a Ponzi scheme. Sean Healy, 39, of Weston, scammed dozens of investors in Pennsylvania. He went on to live in the lap of luxury in Florida, acquiring a $2.4 million [...]

Political groups and politicians have not returned more than $1.8 million in tainted campaign donations received from entities and individuals linked to the alleged Allen Stanford Ponzi scheme, according to the court-appointed receiver in the civil case against Stanford. Ralph Janvey, the receiver, said only $87,800 had been returned by politicians. Letters requesting the money [...]

Disbarred Florida attorney Scott Rothstein has pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy that included mail fraud and wire fraud, and to two separate counts of wire fraud. “Today’s guilty plea is an important step in bringing to justice those who perpetrated a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme under the guise of operating a legitimate law firm,” [...]

Ka-boom! A federal judge has frozen the assets of alleged Ponzi schemer Richard Elkinson, accused of fleecing investors in Massachusetts by telling them he brokered deals for government uniforms and uniforms worn by Olympic athletes. Meanwhile, the attorney general of the United States ventured to Florida today and gave a dramatic speech at the Forum [...]

BULLETIN: Scott Rothstein, the Fort Lauderdale attorney charged with racketeering last month and disbarred amid allegations he orchestrated a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme involving bogus legal settlements, is expected to change his plea to guilty.

It’s not as though alleged fraudster J.V. Huffman Jr. did not have the expensive cars and real estate often associated with Ponzi schemes or financial frauds. Huffman, jailed awaiting trial in North Carolina on Ponzi and weapons charges, had plenty of those, according to William Walt Pettit, the court-appointed receiver. He had an Aston Martin [...]

EDITOR’S NOTE: There is a link at the bottom of this story to a report filed by Burton Wiand, the receiver in the Arthur Nadel Ponzi case in Sarasota, Fla. We encourage readers to read the document in its entirety. The Nadel case is not yet a year old. Nadel, who turned 77 today and [...]

The Justice Department has opened a probe into the political donations of R. Allen Stanford, according to the Miami Herald. Stanford is jailed in Texas amid allegations he presided over a $7 billion Ponzi scheme on the Caribbean island nation of Antigua. Among the first names to surface were the names of the National Republican [...]

These are some trying times for the legal profession. Disbarred Florida attorney Scott Rothstein is implicated in an alleged $1.2 billion Ponzi fraud in which prosecutors said attorneys from his shuttered, 70-attorney firm in Fort Lauderdale were getting paid from Ponzi proceeds that flowed from bogus “settlements” in cases involving sexual harassment or sexual infidelity. [...]

Just hours after news broke of a racketeering indictment by Colorado prosecutors against a Denver-area man in an alleged Ponzi scheme, Michigan prosecutors announced the racketeering indictment of a Greater Detroit woman in what was described as a real-estate Ponzi scheme. In the past two days, prosecutors from different agencies in different regions of the [...]

In what is becoming a familiar refrain in the Ponzi universe, former Fort Lauderdale attorney Scott Rothstein threatened a Florida newspaper and one of its reporters in the weeks prior to the exposure of his $1.2 billion fraud, the Sun Sentinel reported. The Sun Sentinel identified the reporter as Brittany Wallman. “Am I not making [...]

In a criminal information and news release dripping with the word “co-conspirators,” federal prosecutors, the FBI and the IRS said Ponzi proceeds were used to grease wheels in law enforcement and pollute the worlds of business and politics in South Florida. Former attorney Scott Rothstein of Fort Lauderdale was arrested for racketeering yesterday. He was [...]

You’ve heard about the Ponzi mansions. You’ve heard about the luxury automobiles — Scott Rothstein’s $1.6 million Bugatti and the $350,000 Rolls-Royces he and suspects in other Ponzi schemes enjoyed. Now comes word that Trevor Cook, implicated in Minnesota with radio talk-show host Pat Kiley in an alleged Ponzi scheme involving at least $194 million, [...]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This column summarizes three Ponzi cases: Joseph Forte, Sean Healy and Tom Petters. Forte has been sentenced; Healy has been convicted, and Petters is waiting to hear his fate from a Minnesota jury. The cases vary widely in size and scope, but demonstrate the terrible consequences of Ponzi schemes on individual investors and [...]

UPDATED 9 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) The alleged Ponzi scheme operated by Fort Lauderdale attorney Scott Rothstein is the stuff from which lawyer jokes are made. It is enough to make the Atticus Finch wing of the trade long for the days in which being a lawyer meant you were special — and being special meant [...]