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An alleged pump-and-dump artist and a cohort were arrested on a Midtown Manhattan street last week in a case that resembled an international cat-and-mouse game that could have been ripped from a spy thriller.
An undercover FBI agent, posing as a middleman with access to crooked stock brokers, coaxed the alleged pump-and-dump financier, Jean-Pierre Neuhaus, from his home in Switzerland to the Big Apple to finalize the deal, The Post has learned.
“I am not so comfortable in the States because in ’98 I was a witness in a stock thing,” Neuhaus, 55, told the undercover fed in a phone call on Jan. 26, according to a recently unsealed court document.
Neuhaus’ fears were spot on.
The g-man convinced him to fly to New York to close the stock scam, and the three, including Neuhaus’ cohort and pal, Roland Kaufmann, planned a lunch meeting that day in Manhattan. FBI agents then swooped in and arrested the pair, court papers show.
Neuhaus and Kaufmann, the CEO of a shell company, Axius Inc., based in Dubai, were hoping to unload up to $5 million in worthless stock on unsuspecting US investors.
But they were caught before they ever got the chance to seal the deal — thanks to the FBI sting operation.
The dramatic arrest appears to be part of a wider probe by the Department of Justice together with Brooklyn federal prosecutors to crack down on slimy stock manipulators, sources said.
Neuhaus and Kaufmann, both Swiss nationals, were cuffed near the famous Carlyle Hotel on 76th Street.
Neuhaus remains behind bars at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center as does Kaufmann, who was granted $2.5 million bail on Wednesday but has yet to come up with the money.
Neuhaus’ reluctance to travel to the US appears to be related to a 2000 incident in which he was forced to pay the Securities and Exchange Commission more than $570,000 for an earlier shady stock deal.
Neuhaus was also invested in SpongeTech, a massive penny-stock scam that cheated hundreds of investors, including hedge fund Pike Capital, and more than a dozen high-profile sports venues out of advertising dollars, sources said.
“My client did nothing wrong other than to innocently allow himself to be trapped,” said Neuhaus’ lawyer, Paul Batista, who called the sting “disturbing and unprecedented conduct by the prosecution.”
Kaufmann’s lawyer, Eric Snyder, declined to comment.
Axius, which is listed on the pink sheets but rarely trades, is a shell company that lost $624,458 last year on sales of $7,837, SEC filings show.
Its auditor recently expressed “substantial doubt” about Axius’ ability to stay in business.
Kaufmann, who controls nearly all of Axius’ stock, wanted to raise roughly $5 million by selling his shares to a network of corrupt brokers. The brokers would buy the stock over a period of months using their clients’ money, and promise to not to sell the stock for 12 months, the feds said.
In exchange, the brokers would get kickbacks of up to 28 percent of the total purchase price. Axius’ share owners would then benefit as other unsuspecting investors piled in, thus driving the stock up further.