A bunch of big-talking Manhattan brokers bilked unsuspecting investors out of $2.5 million by pressuring them over the telephone to buy shares involving a supposedly promising software company, the feds charged yesterday.
FBI detectives put the cuffs on five of the alleged fraudsters yesterday, hauling them into Manhattan federal court on a 51-count indictment that charged them with securities crimes, including conspiracy and securities, wire and mail fraud.
The men arrested – Igor Kotlyar, Alex Berg, John Donadio, Padraig McGlynn and Gianfranco Carbonara – are accused of tricking 31 investors into buying stock in Thomas Fletcher Securities by using documents plagiarized from materials describing software of another firm, E*Trade.
One investor in Georgia bought $500,000 worth of the bogus $10 shares after being telephoned by a person pretending to work for Goldman Sachs who said he’d be willing to buy the shares for $25 each, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jim Comey said.
Investors were told that an initial public offering of Thomas Fletcher – which operated out of offices at 39 Broadway – was imminent, even though the company had no such plans, the indictment said.
Kotlyar also allegedly duped several of the investors in California-based company Transnational Financial Network into transferring half a million shares to him – which he converted to his own use.
After Thomas Fletcher closed shop last November, McGlynn and Carbonara allegedly hatched a scheme to steal funds remaining in clients’ accounts by secretly transferring the money to E*Trade accounts and obtaining ATM cards to withdraw the cash.