Preet Bharara

A New York man was arrested by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service yesterday in a bizarre case in which it was alleged he threatened to assault customers of his bogus online eyeglasses shop. Vitaly Borker, 34, of Brooklyn, was denied bail. He bizarrely told the New York Times weeks ago that he threatened customers as […]

BULLETIN: The FBI has arrested Joann Crupi of Westfield, N.J., and Annette Bongiorno of  Boca Raton, Fla. The women were charged with helping Bernard Madoff pull off his Ponzi scheme by both actively participating in and concealing the epic fraud, federal prosecutors in New York said. The women had worked for Madoff for a combined […]

UPDATED 10:56 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.) The ASA Monitor Ponzi and criminals’ forum now is redirecting to a website operated by CashX.com, a Canadian payment processor that hawks MasterCard debit cards and says it permits customers to withdrawn money to Liberty Reserve. Liberty Reserve is a Ponzi-friendly payment processor purportedly headquartered in Costa Rica after earlier […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: It is common for fraudsters to claim that “offshore” locations insulate HYIPs, autosurfs and other investment-fraud schemes from prosecution in the United States. It is equally common for purveyors to claim the schemes are harmless. The story of the alleged DMG pyramid scheme is one in which prosecutors allege a monstrous multilevel-marketing company […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: The briefs below summarize recent developments in Ponzi cases or actions in new Ponzi cases. Sentenced: Matthew B. Pizzolato, 26, Tickfaw, La. Ripped off senior citizens in Ponzi scheme. In sentencing Pizzolato to 30 years in federal prison, U. S. District Judge Lance M. Africk said Pizzolato “stole from hard working Americans” and […]

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 […]

A federal judge has thrown the book at recidivist securities fraudster Irving Stitsky, agreeing with prosecutors that he is an “inveterate con-man” and sentencing him to 85 years in federal prison. Separately, a New York state appeals court — acting unanimously — reinstated portions of a civil lawsuit dismissed by a judge in 2008 that […]

A New Jersey woman was arrested this morning on charges she fleeced more than 20 Greater New York investors by engineering  a $45 million Ponzi scheme involving purported real- estate flips, the FBI said. Antoinette Hodgson, 58, of Montclair, New Jersey, was accused of conspiracy and wire fraud amid allegations she recruited clients by telling […]

A naturalized U.S. citizen born in Pakistan was arrested at JFK Airport in New York late last night after he was removed from a flight bound for Dubai, authorities said. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the arrest of Faisal Shahzad in an extraordinary news conference in the middle of the night. President Obama was […]

Still pushing work-at-home schemes on the Internet? The Federal Trade Commission has a message for you. On Wednesday, the FTC will announce a major “law enforcement sweep cracking down on job and work-at-home fraud fueled by the economic downturn,” the agency said. Investigators will release “[s]till shots from the Web sites of some of the […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: Recidivism, the tendency to continue committing crimes or breaking laws even after getting caught and perhaps even going to prison, is a common theme in the scam universe. It has been an element in many recent cases we’ve written about, including the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme case (principals Andy Bowdoin and Clarence Busby had […]