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Oops! He did it again.
A brazen New York broker who was arrested for a pump-and-dump scheme back in 2007 can’t seem to stop cheating people.
After being barred from the brokerage business for his penny-stock shenanigans, Anthony John Johnson of leafy Katonah, in Westchester County, simply switched to running a hedge-fund Ponzi scheme — while free on bail awaiting sentencing for his first crime.
Johnson, 41, allegedly stole millions from lifelong friends and neighbors in the Big Apple’s tony northern suburbs — many of whom say they had been investing with him since before he was nabbed by the feds in 2007. His smooth-talking scheme even lured celebrities, including Miami Heat forward Mike Miller and Patrick Seacor, the former drummer of glam-rock band Scissor Sisters, people familiar with the scandal told The Post.
A wealthy heir to the Quaker Oats fortune also had money tied up with the fraudster, sources said.
Miller and Quaker Oats heir Tim Hower didn’t return requests for comment. Johnson’s lawyer, Ben Brafman, known for defending big names like Michael Jackson and former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, didn’t return a request for comment.
“I am totally devastated by this whole thing,” Seacor said in a telephone interview. “This guy has ruined my life.”
With bounced checks to investors piling up — and groups of jilted investors showing up on the doorstep of his Katonah home demanding answers — Johnson was forced to come clean about his hedge-fund fraud to his lawyer in March.
Even as Johnson was talking to his lawyer about turning himself in, he was telling worried investors it was the bank’s fault that their checks bounced, and that their money was safe, investors said.
Despite Johnson’s best efforts, the jig was up. Once in custody, Anthony told law-enforcement officials he was worried for his personal safety. He moved his pregnant wife, Alison — the co-owner of a Manhattan Pilates studio — to his parents’ house in Cortlandt Manor, NY.
Johnson’s latest scam involved a hedge fund he ran with Randal Hansen, of Turnton, SD, called Rahfco. Hansen hasn’t been charged in connection with the case, but he’s being sued civilly by burned investors, as is Johnson’s family.
Since turning himself in, Johnson has been held in a Brooklyn detention center, where he’s agreed to spill the beans on his latest co-conspirators — and where he will be forced to stay far away from his penchant for fraud.
Last week, Johnson was sentenced to 18 months for his first crime, centering on cheating customers of now-defunct brokerage firm Park Capital and a related penny-stock manipulation.
Johnson will face sentencing for the Ponzi scheme on Sept. 14.
Miami Heat’s Miller hails from South Dakota, where Johnson’s hedge fund partner, Hansen, is from. Reached in Sioux Falls, SD, Miller’s dad simply laughed at the mention of Johnson’s name.
“Yup, we know him,” he said, before taking a message for his hoop-star son. kwhitehouse@nypost.com