Jean Pierre Collardeau, a French national, was the kingpin of the ring"
Irving Freiberg of Boca Raton stole a lot of money from Doreen Labit – and from a lot of other people.
He admits it. He pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J., last week to stock fraud charges.
“I lost so much money in the last three years over this thing,” said an angry Labit, who lives outside Dallas, Texas.
“We earned a lot of money legally – and we lost it though fraud,” he said.
The impact was more than financial, she said. “There have been divorces, retirement funds were used up, kids were unable to go to college.”
Freiberg and eight other alleged co-conspirators are all going to pay for their crimes, said U.S. Attorney Mauro Wolfe from the U. S. Attorney’s Criminal Division in Newark.
Among them, Freiberg is losing his Boca Raton home, five expensive cars, jewelry and cash – and may end up doing 10 years in jail – in return for his plea agreement.
The 48-year-old suspect whose home is in the gated community of Long Lake Estates off Clint Moore Road just west of Florida’s Turnpike, was ordered by U.S. District Court Judge William G. Bassler to surrender more than $3.5 million in cash and assets to reimburse defrauded investors.
Wolfe said that Freiberg agreed to forfeit to the United States his Boca Raton home; five vehicles, including a 2003 Mercedes Benz, a 2003 Aston Martin, a 2002 Bentley Azure and a 2004 Maserati and several hundred thousand dollars in jewelry. The total estimated worth of the forfeited assets is in excess of $2 million, not including more than $1.5 million in cash, the U.S. attorney said.
The forfeited properties and cash will be made available to defrauded investors.
No date has been set for his sentencing.
Wolfe told the Boca Raton News that Freiberg lived in New York when the alleged fraud scheme began in March 1998. He later moved to Boca Raton, but he continued the scheme because he worked largely on the Internet.
There’s another South Florida connection. Boca Raton attorney Julie Vianale has filed a class action suit against most of the conspirators involved in the case. She said Freiberg is not named in that suit “because his level of involvement was not really known.”
Wolfe said that Jean Pierre Collardeau, a French national, was the kingpin of the ring.
But according to Vianale, “a lot of people lost a lot of money” through the scheme. “A lot of innocent stockholders” who purchased what was basically a penny stock.
Wolfe said Freiberg was formerly the head of Stockgenie.com, an Internet stock promotion Web site.
“We all relied on that Web site for information,” lamented Labit.
Freiberg still lives in Boca Raton. When a News reporter inquired, a guard at the gate of Long Lake Estates called the house and said he was told by Freiberg’s son that his father was not at home. But the guard said the man is still a resident.
U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie said nine people took part in what he called “an elaborate scheme to defraud investors of more than $20 million.”
At his plea hearing, Christie said, Freiberg admitted that he knew that Marc Armand Rousso, Jean Pierre Collardeau, Charles Nisenbaum and others created Pro Net Link (PNLK) as a public company, and that they had agreed to issue millions of shares of PNLK stock in the names of co-conspirators in order to conceal their scheme from the investing public.
According to Christie, Freiberg said he knew that they secretly controlled millions of dollars worth of PNLK stock that was issued in the names of other alleged participants, Nicole Peignier, Martine Meillot, Eric Niger and Muriel Prochasson. Freiberg also admitted that he learned they had issued a large block of PNLK stock to a fictitious identity, Robert Sambou, said Christie.
The Boca man also reportedly admitted that he knew the issued shares were then deposited into accounts in Canada which the alleged conspirators controlled.
The prosecutor said Freiberg agreed with several alleged conspirators in March 1998 to promote the stock on his Web site “to spark interest and greater demand for the company’s stock,” said Christie.
The Boca suspect said that in return for the stock promotion, he and another man were to receive from Collardeau and his co-conspirators a significant percentage of the profits from the sale of PNLK stock.
Christie said Freiberg continued the fraudulent stock promotion from 1998 through 2003. |
