Department Of Justice Expands Services For Crime Victims

The U.S. Justice Department released the below information:

The Department of Justice today published a final rule expanding the ability of victim serving agencies and organizations across the nation to reach and serve more crime victims at a time of substantial increases in victim assistance funding.  Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) funding directed to the states for victim assistance has more than quadrupled in the last two fiscal years. 

“Supporting the victims of crime is as essential to the pursuit of justice as making arrests and prosecuting cases,” said Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch.  “This new rule significantly expands state and local agencies’ ability to reach survivors of a wide range of crimes, to help them recover from their ordeals, and to empower them to secure a brighter future for themselves and their loved ones.  I want to thank Congress for their outstanding commitment to the rights and well-being of victims, and I pledge that the Department of Justice will continue to do everything in our power to promote healing, restore lives, and secure meaningful justice for every American affected by crime.”

Federal funding for state victim assistance programs comes from the Crime Victims Fund, a repository of federal criminal fines, forfeitures and special assessments.  This fund does not include tax dollars.  The states, in turn, provide sub-grants to local public agencies and community service providers that help individuals, families and communities recover from both the initial trauma and the long-term effects of victimization. 

Congress raised the appropriations level of the Crime Victims Fund from $745 million in fiscal year 2014 to more than $2.3 billion in fiscal year 2015, effectively quadrupling the amount available for crime victim assistance programs.  Congress raised the cap again to more than $3 billion in fiscal year 2016.

The Victim of Crime Act (VOCA) Formula Victim Assistance Grant Program rule—clarifies and expands support for a continuum of services to crime victims, including:

• comprehensive legal assistance, including victims’ rights enforcement and civil legal assistance related to the victimization;
• transitional housing for victims of domestic violence, human trafficking and other crimes and expanded coverage of relocation expenses;
• forensic interviewing and some medical expenses;
• volunteer trainings, including support for Court Appointed Special Advocates; and
• victim-centered restorative justice.

The rule also emphasizes that programs that serve victims of elder abuse, human trafficking, financial fraud and other crimes are eligible for VOCA funding, and removes language that prevented VOCA funding from supporting services to victims in detention and correctional facilities.  The rule defines the statutory term victim of child abuse, to make clear that the term covers a broad array of harm inflicted on children and includes children who witness violence or who are victims of pornography.

The rule, which replaces the VOCA Victim Assistance Final Program Guidelines, is effective today following a 30 day period for public notice and comment after publication in the Federal Register. Recipients of VOCA Assistance grant funds from theOffice for Victims of Crime must comply with the rule after the effective date.  For more information, click here.

FBI: Financial Fraud - Pharmaceutical Executive Sold Fake Stock in Medical Research Company

The FBI released the below report:

Greg Ruehle liked to gamble—the only problem was that he did it with other people’s money. In the process, the pharmaceutical executive not only swindled his friends and people from his hometown out of millions of dollars, he injured the reputation of a legitimate medical research company.

Ruehle, a California resident who worked in the biotech industry, was hired by the medical research firm ICB International (ICBI) to identify investors who could fund its research. The San Diego-based company is developing technologies for early diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

“Basically, the company’s founder invested his blood, sweat, and tears trying to come up with a cure for Parkinson’s disease,” said Special Agent John Roberts, who investigated the case from the FBI’s San Diego Division. “He was relying on Ruehle to help raise money to move the company forward.”

Instead, explained co-investigator Special Agent Bridgid Cook, Ruehle “collected nearly $2 million and used the money for gambling and other personal expenses.”

Ruehle was not a licensed broker. He was supposed to be a finder—someone who would introduce investors to the company, and then ICBI would take it from there. But Ruehle took advantage of his hometown friends, who relied on him to provide information about the company’s financial future. He took investors’ money and issued them fake stock certificates, none of which he reported to ICBI.

“There were a lot of victims in this case—more than 160,” Cook said, “and a major betrayal of trust.” Ruehle’s investors were mostly friends from Minnesota, where he grew up, and they were not wealthy. Many contributed $5,000 or $10,000. “He preyed upon people from his hometown,” Cook explained. “They relied on his expertise and knowledge of the industry.”

“Investors thought they were getting in on a great deal,” Roberts added. But not one of Ruehle’s investors saw a penny—and neither did ICBI. To make matters worse, the company had no idea its investment “finder” was collecting money and issuing fake stock in the company.

In 2015, some of the investors asked for proof that their money was being used at the company. In response, Ruehle sent them a letter on what appeared to be ICBI letterhead, allegedly signed by the company’s CEO. In truth, the letter was a forgery—Ruehle even misspelled the CEO’s name.

“ICBI was completely innocent in the fraud,” Roberts said, “but they were made to look bad. Certainly there was damage done to the company, which was trying to do a good thing.”

Worried investors eventually contacted the FBI, and within four months, Cook and Roberts had unraveled the scheme. Last month, Ruehle pled guilty to securities fraud. In addition, he admitted to possession of a stolen firearm—discovered during the execution of a search warrant—and acknowledged that he owned three stolen firearms, all unregistered.

“There was no reason for him to be buying guns off the street when he could have been buying them legitimately from a dealer,” Cook said, adding that the 64-year-old Ruehle is typical of many financial fraudsters. “He was charismatic and a natural salesman, but he used those skills to trick people. And then he used their money for gambling, to buy expensive cars, and to live on a waterfront property.”

Ruehle is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court later this spring.

FBI: Financial Fraud: The Disney Resort That Never Was

The FBI released the below report:

Thomas W. Lucas, Jr. was such an effective liar that he was able to convince hundreds of investors—even members of his own family—that he had inside information about a Disney resort to be built in Texas that would make the nearby scrubland worth a fortune for those who bought it ahead of time.

Of course, there was no “Frontier Disney,” as Lucas claimed, but using false documents, forged signatures, and phony presentations, he was able to pocket nearly $450,000 in real estate fees over a four-year period and cause investors to lose approximately $20 million.

“Thomas Lucas Jr. fooled savvy investors and very intelligent people,” said Special Agent Rick Velasquez, who investigated the case from the FBI’s Dallas Division. “He was a very believable guy.”

From 2006 to 2010, Lucas defrauded more than 250 investors. He claimed to have insider information regarding a Disney resort and theme park planned for a rural area about 50 miles north of Dallas. He was giving investors a chance to buy surrounding land outright, or to purchase options to buy the land near the supposed resort. The 65 investors who purchased options lost every cent they invested—more than $8 million. Some investors, including Lucas’ father and uncle in the family real estate business, purchased land outright, believing the Disney story.

“There was not one grain of truth in Lucas’ presentations,” Velasquez said, “but his pitch was very elaborate, and it fooled a lot of people. He duped his own family.”

Lucas claimed to have letters between Disney and a management firm saying that the company had acquired enough land to make the deal happen. He included the letters—complete with forged Disney officials’ signatures—in his presentations to investors, along with detailed maps, concept plans, and images that were later discovered to be lifted from the Internet, some from Disney websites.

According to Lucas, Disney planned to make the big announcement about the resort at a Dallas Cowboys football game on Thanksgiving in 2006. When that didn’t happen, he told investors there were delays. “Then the announcement was going to be Super Bowl 2007, 2008. Then it was Fourth of July at the Beijing Olympic games,” Velasquez said. “He was just trying to keep investors and potential investors on the hook.”

With each delay, Lucas would sweeten the pot with some new bogus e-mail from a Disney executive or other bit of tantalizing information meant to persuade people the project was still on track. Eventually, investors became suspicious, and one made a complaint to the FBI.

Velasquez, who specializes in financial fraud cases, says the scheme went on for so long because Lucas was believable—and also because investors could not resist the temptation of making large returns on their money.

When confronted by investigators about his claims, Lucas falsely blamed the supposed Disney information he received on a man he met at a methadone rehab clinic, who had since died. In 2014, Lucas was indicted by a federal grand jury on seven counts of wire fraud and one count of lying to the FBI.

Last September, after a jury trial in which Lucas maintained his innocence but was found guilty on all charges, a judge sentenced the 35-year-old to 17.5 years in prison. “That was a stiff sentence for a white-collar crime,” Velasquez noted, “but he defrauded a lot of people and showed no remorse.”

FBI: Financial Fraud - Inside the Investigation of a Las Vegas Construction Boss

The FBI released the below report:

When a federal judge sentenced former Las Vegas construction boss Leon Benzer to nearly 16 years in prison in August, it marked a final chapter in a $58 million fraud scheme that took investigators nearly a decade to unravel.

Over a period of many years, Benzer brazenly sought to gain control of numerous condominium homeowners associations (HOAs) in the Las Vegas area to secure lucrative construction and other contracts for himself and additional conspirators. To date, 44 individuals, including numerous state officials, have been convicted of crimes in connection with the fraud—which has been described as one of the largest public corruption cases in Nevada history.

“This case represented an incredibly complicated financial fraud with a significant public corruption component,” said Special Agent Michael Elliott, who spent nearly eight years working on the investigation from the FBI’s Las Vegas Division. “It involved so many people over so long a period of time, it was like an intricate spider web of crime that kept expanding.”

The scheme was nothing if not grandiose. In attempting to control dozens of Nevada HOAs between approximately 2002 and 2009, Benzer, an attorney, and other conspirators recruited straw buyers to purchase condominiums and then secure positions on HOA boards of directors. Benzer rigged HOA board elections and paid board members to take actions favorable to his interests—including hiring his co-conspirator’s law firm to handle construction-related litigation and awarding profitable construction contracts to Benzer’s company, Silver Lining Construction.

Evidence in the case against Leon Benzer included a $20,000 cash bribe that was concealed in this
baby wipes container.

Benzer manipulated and bribed HOA boards in a variety of ways—he often claimed he had local judges and law enforcement in his pocket; in other cases, he fooled unwitting homeowners into thinking his actions were legitimate and they were simply making wise investment choices.

In September 2008, investigators executed a search warrant—one of nine that would take place during the investigation—and found that Benzer was in the process of targeting well over 20 different HOAs for illegal takeovers. “There were boxes and boxes of folders with information about different HOAs,” Elliott said. “He was deliberately attempting to identify board members along with other information to target what he believed were HOAs vulnerable to takeover through bribery, extortion, or whatever illegal means could be used.”

One of the HOAs had more than 700 units, with each owner paying community fees, Elliott said. “In some cases, HOA boards had operating budgets larger than some small Nevada cities. There was lots of money at stake,” he added.

The FBI, along with investigators from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and Internal Revenue Service - Criminal Investigations, used a variety of investigative techniques—including confidential sources, multiple undercover operatives, and forensic accountants—and conducted hundreds of interviews to piece together the extent of the crimes committed by Benzer and his co-conspirators.

In January 2015, Benzer pled guilty to multiple counts of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and tax evasion. In addition to his 188-month jail term, he was ordered to pay more than $13 million in restitution.

“This was a very sophisticated scam that evolved over time and generated millions of dollars for Benzer,” Elliott said, adding that when Benzer was riding high, the charismatic fraudster employed “an army of lawyers, had bodyguards, and had an entourage that included three armored SUVs. He had no problem spending money to maintain his lavish lifestyle.”

But like many high-flying scam artists, it was only a matter of time before Benzer was brought to justice. “Now he is in jail and penniless,” Elliott said. “He has nothing.”

FBI: Financial Fraud And The Hair Show That Never Was

The FBI website reports on a fraud scheme involving a fictional hair show

Tamira Fonville’s job might be described as “recruiter.” For a time, she profited substantially by enlisting college-age women to participate in a hair show. The problem was, there never was any show, and everything about Fonville’s line of work was a fraud.

She and her partner—both of whom are now in prison—regularly traveled the Interstate 95 corridor from New York to Washington, D.C., visiting shopping malls and other places where young women were known to spend time.

Using a series of phony names, Fonville would interest the women in the hair show, offering to pay for their services. But to pay them, she said, she needed their debit card numbers and access to their accounts.

With that access, she would not simply clean out their accounts. Instead, her partner and mastermind of the scam, Ricardo Falana, would deposit bogus checks into the legitimate accounts, and then immediately begin withdrawing funds before the bank realized the fraud.

“It was a crazy, hit or miss scheme,” said Special Agent Sean Norman, who investigated the case from the FBI’s Philadelphia Division. “But they did it at such a high volume that they made a lot of money for several years. There was approximately $600,000 in actual losses to banks and other financial institutions.”

On a typical recruiting trip, Fonville might talk with 20 or 30 women and would follow up with text messages using disposable phones whose numbers could not be traced. If she ended up with three or four willing participants, that was enough.

“Some took the hair show bait and handed over their debit cards and PINs,” Norman said. “Others who were skeptical got a different pitch,” he explained. “They were told: ‘I can make money appear in your account. You will get some money, I will get some money, and the bank won’t lose anything.’”

With access to legitimate accounts not tied to him, Falana deposited forged checks of up to $10,000 and then withdrew money before the bank realized the checks were bad. Many of the victims were coached to tell bank investigators that their debit cards had been stolen and their PINs were written on the cards.

“The majority of the account holders knew they were doing something fraudulent,” Norman said. “They thought they were going to get something out of it, but they got nothing.”

For a time, the money rolled in, and Fonville “got addicted to the lifestyle,” Norman said. According to court documents, between 2008 and 2013, Fonville personally benefited from the scheme to the tune of more than $230,000. She used some of the proceeds to pay for plastic surgery, the car loan on her $30,000 Chevrolet Camaro, and the $2,100 monthly rent on her New York apartment. She would later tell investigators she viewed the scam as a career.

Fonville also fraudulently obtained food stamps, Medicaid, and benefits from a New York child care program, and she received deferments on almost $100,000 in student loans because she claimed she had no income. But then she lied on her car loan application, stating she was an employee of Mesa Airlines and had a salary of $65,000 per year.

Eventually, some of the women whose accounts had been used came forward and told the truth. Norman was able to trace withdrawn funds to Fonville and Falana, and Falana was identified on surveillance video depositing what turned out to be bogus checks. Norman also used E-ZPass toll receipts to link the pair’s recruiting trips to account holders and subsequent fraudulent transactions on their accounts.

“After the pieces all fit together,” said Norman, who is a certified public account and specializes in financial fraud investigations, “their actions were highly predictable.”

Fonville was arrested in August 2014. She pled guilty the following month to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and three counts of bank fraud and was sentenced in April to 15 months in prison. Falana pled guilty to similar bank fraud charges in October 2014 and in February received an 80-month sentence.

In the end, Norman said, “they blew all the money and had nothing to show for it.” 

FBI: The Case of the Corrupt Coin Dealer

The FBI website released the below story:

Financial fraud comes in all shapes and sizes. And while corporate criminals, inside traders, and Ponzi schemers often cause their victims to lose millions of dollars, the case of the crooked coin dealer from New York illustrates that even relatively small-time fraudsters must answer for their crimes.

Chrysanthos Nicholas, a 55-year-old rare coin and precious metals dealer, will be spending the next 27 months in federal prison for stealing more than $260,000 from some of his elderly customers.

Nicholas had been a coin dealer for a number of years and had developed relationships with collectors around the country. He persuaded three elderly clients—all well into their 80s—to send him coins with the promise that he would value them, hold them, and sell them for the clients on their request.

“Such arrangements are not uncommon in the coin collector world,” said Special Agent Shane Ball, who investigated the case from the FBI’s Minneapolis Division. But after the dealer had received coin collections from the men, “he promptly stopped returning their calls,” Ball said. “He completely dropped off the radar.”

In one case, according to court documents, Nicholas entered into a contract with a client in rural Minnesota to evaluate, store and sell the client’s coins. In 2010, at Nicholas’ direction, the client mailed his coins—valued at more than $130,000—to Nicholas in Southold, New York.

Later, after Nicholas stopped answering or returning the client’s calls, the victim went to his local sheriff’s office and made a complaint. Because the coin dealer lived outside of Minnesota, the sheriff’s deputy called the FBI for assistance. Ball, a 20-year veteran of the Bureau, explained that agents regularly offer assistance to local law enforcement in these types of matters that cross state lines.

Ball, in turn, requested assistance from the FBI’s New York Field Office, and Special Agent Zacharia Baldwin was dispatched to interview Nicholas.

“My belief is that Nicholas picked these particular victims because they were elderly and he thought he could get away with it,” Ball said. For their part, the victims had all done business with Nicholas in the past with no problems. “They had every reason to suspect that this was another business deal that would go well,” Ball added. “But Nicholas used the trust he had built up over the years to steal from them.”

Meanwhile, Nicholas sold the coins and used the money for his personal benefit. When he was charged with mail fraud in July 2014, nothing remained of his victims’ collections. At his sentencing last month, a federal judge ordered Nicholas to pay nearly $250,000 in restitution to his victims after he completes his jail term.

Although the money Nicholas stole from his clients is small compared to some financial frauds, Ball is quick to point out that it represented a great deal to the victims—it was one man’s life savings. “Our goal is always to seek justice for victims,” he said, “whether they are corporate shareholders or individuals from small-town America.”

FBI Undercover Agents Uncover Billion-Dollar Investment Fraud Scheme

The FBI released information regarding a billion-dollar investment fraud scheme.

For a group of financial fraudsters, it seemed like the ultimate get in an investment scam—a victim willing to hand over $1 billion.

However, like victims of financial scams everywhere, these criminals should have paid more attention to the “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” adage—the wealthy “victim” in this case was actually an undercover FBI agent. And last month, the last three members of this group of con artists were sentenced to federal prison for their role in this scam. Several co-conspirators have previously pled guilty.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2013/december/billion-dollar-investment-fraud