Convicted con artist pardoned by Trump is arrested again for fraud

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A New Jersey con man who was pardoned by former President Donald Trump has been arrested and is accused of defrauding investors out of millions of dollars.

Eliyahu “Eli” Weinstein was charged alongside four others with a number of crimes, including conspiring to defraud investors of more than $35m and conspiracy to obstruct justice, according to a statement from the office of the US attorney for New Jersey. Each of the five defendants was charged with one count of wire fraud conspiracy and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Mr Weinstein was given a 24-year federal prison sentence after being convicted of two separate investment fraud schemes — one that ran from 2004 through 2011, the other from 2012 through 2013 — across both of which he defrauded investors of roughly $230m, according to a court document.

On 19 January, 2021, after Mr Weinstein had served less than eight of the 24 years, Mr Trump pardoned him. Shortly after his release from prison, Mr Weinstein started up a new scheme, the statement said.

“We allege Mr. Weinstein took part in a new scheme to rip off investors by hiding his real identity,” Special Agent in Charge James E Dennehy of the Newark FBI said. Mr Weinstein allegedly used the alias “Mike Konig” in this new scheme outlined by the FBI.

Mr Weinstein allegedly said in a “surreptitious audio” obtained by investigators August 2022: “We collectively did not tell everyone who I was, no one would ever give you a penny if they knew who I was . . . because I have a bad reputation.”

He worked with four others, the court document states: Aryeh “Ari” Bromberg , Joel Wittels, Shlomo Erez, and Alaa Hattab. The men were accused of taking “tens of millions of dollars from investors” through the firm Optimus Investments Inc. Most of these investors were “family, friends, or close associates,” the document said.

Mr Weinstein, Mr Bromberg, and Mr Wittels received a large portion of the money through Tryon Management Group LLC — another company that was owned and operated “by two other conspirators” — which promised investors opportunities to invest in deals involving Covid-19 face masks, “scarce baby formula,” and first-aid kits “bound for Ukraine,” according to the statement.

However, unable to pay the investors with legitimate investment returns, the men decided to combine the funds from both Optimus and Tryon investors and “use it to make monthly payments to other investors in a Ponzi-like fashion” starting in February 2022, the document states.

“Once the Tryon owners learned that Mike Konig was actually Weinstein, they agreed with the defendants to continue concealing Weinstein’s identity from investors and to raise additional money to pay off existing Tryon investors, all in an effort to stop the Ponzi scheme from falling apart and to cover up the fraud,” the statement said.

The men are also charged with obstructing justice after allegedly “hiding Mr Weinstein’s assets” — $200m in restitution — owed to his previous victims, as well as allegedly “concealing his myriad business activities, which were expressly prohibited by the terms of his supervised release,” according to the court document.

If convicted on both charges, each of the five men face a maximum of 25 years in prison and fines of “either $250,000 or twice the gain or loss from the offense, whichever is greatest,” according to the statement.

On top of this, the Securities and Exchange Commission also filed a civil complaint against the men and two other individuals “based on the same and additional conduct,” the statement said.

Mr Weinstein was one of the 143 people pardoned by former President Trump in the final hours of his term.