About Richard Frankowski

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So far Richard Frankowski has created 573 blog entries.

Pennsylvania Man Charged With Defrauding Investors Out Of $1.2M

Bernard M. Parker of Indiana, Pennsylvania is charged with defrauding twenty-two investors out of $1.2 million and using the cash to pay his mortgage, debit card purchases, and other personal expenses. Parker, who operated Parker Financial Services from his home, was indicted under seal on counts of securities and mail fraud. The case was then unsealed, and the SEC filed a related suit against Parker. FINRA records show that Parker is a former Edward Jones employee. Agents with the FBI, IRS and U.S. Postal Inspection Service said that from 2008 through 2014, Mr. Parker enticed customers to enter into “Investor Contracts” involving the purchase of tax lien certificates for properties in Florida, Colorado and Arizona that would earn returns of 6% to 9% annually, as well as other investments that were not registered by the state or the SEC. Parker told investors that their money invested in his contracts would be used for legitimate investments but then diverted hundreds of [...]

RCAP Shutting Down Wholesaling REIT Division After Fraud Charges, Drop In Sales

RCS Capital Corp. ("RCAP") announced this week that it is closing its wholesaling brokerage division following a decline in sales of nontraded real estate investment trusts and allegations of fraud. The shutdown will result in the layoff of roughly 150 employees. Another 50, elsewhere in the company, will also lose their jobs. The company was founded by former real estate mogul Nicholas Schorsch, who remains a principal shareholder. The wholesaling brokerage division, Realty Capital Securities ("RCS"), was the centerpiece of his nontraded REIT empire, which at its peak raised hundreds of millions of dollars a month in equity from mom-and-pop investors who bought Schorsch's REITs. RCS will close in March. In addition to that announcement, RCAP stated that the division had come to a $3 million settlement with the Massachusetts security division, which had charged RCS with fraudulently gathering proxy votes to support real estate deals sponsored by Schorsch's AR Capital, which managed Schorsch's REITs. “RCS is pleased to confirm it [...]

Vermont Man Charged By SEC For Operating Ponzi Scheme

Homero Joshua Garza of Brattleboro, Vermont faces federal charges alleging that he operated a Ponzi scheme that bilked thousands of investors. The SEC charged Garza and his two Bitcoin-mining companies, GAW Miners LLC and ZenMiner LLC, with running the scheme. The companies sold $20 million worth of what appeared to be shares in Hashlets, digital mining contracts, from August to December 2014. The Hashlets were advertised as "always profitable and never obsolete" and were sold to over 10,000 investors. The SEC filed its complaint in U.S. District Court in Connecticut. In the complaint, the SEC defines mining for Bitcoin or other virtual currencies as "applying computer power to try to solve complex equations that verify a group of transactions in that virtual currency. The first computer (or collection of computers) to solve such an equation is awarded new units of that virtual currency." The SEC says that the companies oversold the Hashlets, which were created so that investors could have a [...]

Kansas Man Sentenced In Securities Fraud Case

Paul C. Carageannis of Wichita, Kansas was sentenced to 60 months of probation and ordered to pay the balance of over $165,000 in misused funds to his victims. Carageannis pleaded no contest on June 15th to one count of felony securities fraud under the Kansas Uniform Securities Act. Carageannies bilked at minimum eleven Kansas investors out of more than $165,000 from October 2008 to February 2009 by selling unregistered securities in an oil and gas lease. Although Carageannis led his investors to believe otherwise, he had lost the lease and rather used most of the cash to pay off existing debts and for other personal uses. Almost $82,000 had been recovered for the victims at the time of the sentencing. In addition to imposing an extended term of probation, the court ordered Carageannis to repay his victims the remaining $84,044.32. “My office is pleased that Mr. Carageannis’s victims will see a return of most of their money,” said Kansas Securities Commissioner Josh Ney. [...]