BULLETIN: Man Whose Invesment License Was Revoked 6 Years Ago Arrested In California; Janamjot Singh Sodhi Suspected Of Hatching Swindle That Gathered At Least $2.4 Million, Feds Say

BULLETIN: A California man whose license to deal in investments was revoked in 2005 and was the subject of a desist-and-refrain order four years later has been arrested on charges be was operating a fraud scheme, federal prosecutors said.

Janamjot Singh Sodhi, also known as Jimmy Singh, was arrested yesterday and will make a court appearance today in California, prosecutors said.

Sodhi also is known as “Jimmy Sodhi,” according to records in California.

Sodhi, former owner of a company known as Elite Financial Inc., gathered $2.4 million from investors despite his dubious history, according to prosecutors.

Some of the money was used to pay off previous investors and personal bills, prosecutors said.

He and Elite are named in a January 2009 desist-and-refrain order issued by the state of California. The order alleged that Sodhi wrote bad checks to an investor after being permanently banned from the New York Stock Exchange in 2005 for misappropriating $474,700 belonging to a client.

The new charges against Sodhi were not immediately clear. The Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force said this afternoon that the office of U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner of the Eastern District of California is prosecuting the case and that the arrest evolved from an investigation by the FBI and the Fresno Police Department.