A mob-linked Manhattan “boiler room” that swindled elderly people out of roughly $12 million since 2000 by fraudulently getting them to buy overly hyped stocks was raided yesterday by the FBI, authorities said.
Ten men — including reputed Bonanno crime family soldier Anthony Guarino — in New York, New Jersey and Florida were busted on securities and wire fraud charges by the feds, who were looking to lock up three more suspects in the scheme, which operated out of offices in a Garment District building on W. 36th St.
A Manhattan federal court indictment said securities firms known as Powercom Energy Services Corp. and Empire Energy Services Corp. induced dozens of investors to buy more than $12 million in stock in a Miami-based Realcast Corp. and Manhattan online gaming company BBC Gaming by making “false and fraudulent statements.”
Realcast, which was in the business of providing live broadcasting and video on demand over the Internet, “had minimal revenues generated from the operation of its business” over a decade, the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office said.
Last December, the indictment charges, one of the defendants, Lance Barbarino, told a co-conspirator that “Barbarino’s ‘mother will come out of the grave’ before Realcast is a successful company.