 The Wild Wild World of Wealth |  |
Nevin Shapiro billed himself as one of the largest grocery wholesalers in the U.S. Nevin Shapiro is now spending the next 20 years in a federal prison. What what wrong? For one, Shapiro raised almost $1 billion from investors but never sold groceries.
With nary a word in conventional media, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan issued a press release announcing the indictment of 11 people involved with online poker. Included in the indictments are the founders of the three largest online poker companies doing business with American gamblers. Should players be worried? The answer is yes if they failed to pay taxes on their winnings.
Even a little due diligence would have uncovered the fraud. Royal West was “paying” investors a higher rate of return than it was charging borrowers who were purchasing real estate from the company. In other words, it was a mathematical impossibility that the loans being made the company could generate the required rate of return needed to pay investors.
James Konaxis was quite the guy. In just a few years he was associated as a stockbroker (registered representative) with a half dozen different brokerage firms – Raymond James, Morgan Stanley & Sentinel Securities, to name a few. He also had quite a track record of severe regulatory violations. Nothing, however, like the most recent violation – taking money from the widow of a one of the people killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon.
There’s something strange coming to the neighborhood. Who you gonna call? Fraud Busters!
I don’t think so.
Lest anyone think the government is easing up on offshore account violations, look at what happened to Mauricio Assor and his son, Levy Cohen-Levy. Both were sentenced last month in a Ft. Lauderdale courtroom to 10 years in prison. A federal court jury convicted the men of conspiracy to defraud the IRS and filing false income tax returns.
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