How did they missed mafia connected Shalom Weiss in the ProNetLink scam? Amex Corp got 200,000 shares according to the class action suit
PDF] PLAINTIFFS? SECOND CONSOLIDATED AMENDED CLASS ACTION COMPLAINT
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period, sometimes used the names Philippe Solomon, Haim Solomon and Malko. ...
Amex Corp., 24 Route Demalagnau CH-1208, Geneva Switzerland; 200000 shares to ...
www.vianalelaw.com/pro_net_link.pdf - Similar pages
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The BCSC names Mr. Weiss as the owner, operator or associate of
several
offshore accounts, including Amex Corp., based in Geneva, and
Dagon
Developments, based in Israel
National Bank of Canada (The) - Street Wire
National Bank's P.I. fugitive client Weiss now in jail
National Bank of Canada (The)
NA
Shares issued 190,566,755 Jun 10 2002 close $
32.90
Monday June 10 2002 Street
Wire
Also B.C. Securities Commission (*BCSC) Street Wire
Also Securities and Exchange Commission (*SEC) Street Wire
Also TSX Venture Exchange (*TSX) Street Wire
America's most-wanted major financial fugitive, a Mafia-linked star
offshore
client of controversial Vancouver brokerage Pacific International
Securities,
is finally behind bars in Florida. Shalom Weiss, also known as Sholam
Weiss,
who fled three years ago, before being sentenced to a record 845 years in
jail
and fined a total of $248.4-million in the biggest-ever criminal
insurance
fraud, was whisked back to Orlando by federal agents on a government
jet
Sunday from Austria. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.)
Mr. Weiss, 47, the subject of an international manhunt for the
massive
National Heritage Life Insurance Inc. mortgage fraud, was tracked down
and
arrested on Oct. 24, 2000, in Vienna, where he waged a vigorous
extradition
defence since. After Mr. Weiss vanished on Oct. 18, 1999, the day before
jury
deliberations after a nine-month federal trial, the FBI and the
Delaware
Insurance Commissioner posted bounty rewards of more than $100,000.
U.S.
authorities credit the assistance and co-operation of law enforcement
agencies
in Israel, Brazil, Belgium, Germany, Hungary and Austria in tracking him
down.
Pacific International's most-wanted client had many sides. Once a
respected
member of New York's Hasidic Jewish community, Mr. Weiss was also a
part-owner
and regular at Scores, an upscale strip club in Manhattan which
allegedly
featured members of the late Don Gotti's Gambino family as secret
partners.
Although it is unclear what, if any, due diligence P.I. did on Mr. Weiss,
his
latest string of fraudulent deals stretches back to at least 1990.
"This man was essentially a financial predator, and National Heritage was
only
the last in a long string of victims," Assistant U.S. Attorney Judy Hunt
told
the press. "The evidence presented at trial showed that Weiss had been
engaged
in a series of bank frauds, bankruptcy frauds and securities frauds
dating
back to the 1980s."
Mr. Weiss was on the top tier of 12 National Heritage figures who pled
guilty
between 1994 and 1999 in a large criminal conspiracy involving a wide
circle
of alleged co-conspirators in Arizona, Texas, Illinois, New York and
Florida.
"According to insurance regulators, the failure of NHLIC is the
largest
failure due to criminal activity in insurance industry history, involving
a
loss which exceeded $250-million," states the office of Paul Perez,
United
States Attorney for the Middle District of Florida in Orlando.
"We are gratified that Shalom Weiss has not evaded the penalties imposed
for
these very serious criminal offenses. Those who pillage our
financial
institutions for their own gain, thereby jeopardizing the financial
security
of our citizenry, must be prosecuted, and face terms of imprisonment
which
reflect the grave harm done by their criminal acts," stated Mr. Perez
on
Monday. Mr. Weiss's 845-year sentence is believed to the longest
sentence
imposed in U.S. history, at least for non-serial killers.
While the initial FBI probe, launched in 1994 with the Internal
Revenue
Service and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, began with a believed fraud
of
$12-million, the case snowballed over the years into a complex
$450-million
mortgage and real estate fraud operation. The Orlando office of the
FBI
earlier called the case "one of the largest white-collar crimes ever."
Mr. Weiss was the star bad-boy client of Pacific International,
a
scandal-plagued Howe Street brokerage, controlled by National Bank of
Canada,
which was charged last July by the British Columbia Securities Commission
for
servicing far more than its share of dubious clients. The securities
regulator
portrays P.I. as a haven for stock crooks, rolling out the welcome mat
for
numerous securities violators and felons, especially in the barely
regulated
OTC Bulletin Board market.
In addition to vigorously defending the serious, but as-yet-proven
BCSC
charges, Pacific International has denied Stockwatch's documented
evidence,
largely obtained through BCSC searches, that it ever serviced
big-league
racketeer and money launderer Mr. Weiss. "Mr Weiss is not and never has been
a
client of Pacific International," stated Vancouver lawyer Bryan Baynham
of
Harper Grey Easton in a strongly worded legal warning letter in January.
"This
story and earlier stories of a similar vein have the potential of
doing
irreparable harm to my client's good name and reputation," he stated.
Despite lawyer Mr. Baynham's legal warning to Stockwatch about reporting
on
Mr. Weiss as a client of Pacific International, the BCSC has never
withdrawn
or otherwise revised the Weiss allegations in its notice of hearing.
"We
certainly haven't retracted that," BCSC acting enforcement director
Wayne
Armistead told Stockwatch on Monday.
Until recently, Mr. Weiss was the standout disreputable P.I. client, topping
a
BCSC citation list including Mafia-linked player Joe Garofalo, Regulation
S
abuser Salvatore Mazzeo, convicted stock felons Paul Harary, David
Hesterman
and ZZZZ Best's Maurice Rind, fellow U.S. securities violators Randy
Biemel,
Jimmy Ray Carter, Richard Gladstone, Steve Keyser and Amr Ibrahim
(Anthony)
Elgindy.
California shortseller Mr. Elgindy took the crown three weeks ago, on May
21,
when he was arrested and denied bail as the head of a ring which
allegedly
bought confidential FBI and grand jury records from several corrupt
FBI
agents, used the information in short attacks, and extorted
cease-and-desist
payments from targeted stock promotions. While Mr. Elgindy traded
heavily
through another Vancouver brokerage in the current case, Global
Securities,
which wired funds offshore to Lebanon, he earlier traded through
Pacific
International.
In an intriguing coincidence, Pacific International serviced both
mortgage
fraudster Mr. Weiss, a key player in the fraudulent 1997 bulletin
board
promotion of Saf T Lok Inc., and controversial fraudbuster Mr. Elgindy,
who
exposed and shorted the promotion. (There is no suggestion Mr. Elgindy and
Mr.
Weiss were acting in concert or even knew each other personally.)
The BCSC names Mr. Weiss as the owner, operator or associate of
several
offshore accounts, including Amex Corp., based in Geneva, and
Dagon
Developments, based in Israel. The regulator included these
Weiss-linked
accounts on several red-flag lists of suspicious activity, including
receiving
in or transferring out of large blocks of OTC-BB shares, in-and-out
cash
transfers with little or no trading, akin to money laundering, and
stock-sales
proceeds distributed to third parties.
The National Heritage case dates back to 1990, when Mr. Weiss's New
York
attorney, Michael Blutrich, Arizona businessman Patrick Smythe and
Orlando
accountant David Davies bought an equity stake in the insurance company with
a
rubber $4-million cheque. Although their corporate account had a balance
of
only a few thousand dollars, the trio stalled the closing until a
Friday
evening, and by the Monday morning, they were able to siphon funds
from
National's treasury, a particularly audacious leveraged buyout with no
money
down. Mr. Davies helped paper over the sham by scooping $540,000 from a
trust
fund he controlled, buying $4.5-million of U.S. T-bills on margin, then
having
a brokerage firm state the bonds were owned without debt.
National Heritage was no prize at first. The insurer, mainly operating
in
Florida, was suffering in the late 1980s and the Delaware insurance
industry
regulator threatened to step in by May of 1990, unwittingly paving the way
for
the Smythe group to come in.
To help finance the sham buyout and subsequent dubious
transactions,
businessman Mr. Smythe and lawyer Mr. Blutrich opened a series of
corporate
accounts at the New York branch of Swiss-based Bank Leumi. Although Mr.
Weiss
did not appear on the scene immediately, he was already quite experienced
in
dealing with, and defrauding, Bank Leumi's New York operation.
In a Sept. 5, 1996, civil judgment after a three-week trial in the
Eastern
District of New York, Mr. Weiss and his plumbing company, Windsor
Plumbing
Supply Co. Inc., were found guilty of civil fraud and conspiracy and
ordered
to pay Cofacredit S.A., a French export finance company,
$5.12-million,
stemming from a plumbing fixtures importing deal dating back to 1987.
After conning Bank Leumi through false representations, Mr. Weiss gained
a
$1.3-million letter of credit in mid-1998. In late 1990, the
plumbing
entrepreneur called Bank Leumi to claim some of the inventory securing
the
loan had been stolen from a warehouse. "Bank Leumi tried to cover this
loss
through an insurance policy, but was unsuccessful because Sholam Weiss
failed
to produce evidence that he owned the inventory allegedly stolen," states
an
Aug. 3, 1999, appeal court decision, which upheld the $5.12-million
Cofacredit
judgment.
Mr. Weiss would later used Windsor Plumbing in at least one of a
multitude
schemes to defraud National Heritage, by using fraudulently inflated
property
appraisals.
While hard at work ripping off National Heritage and other victims, Mr.
Weiss
often took time to enjoy life.
In 1996, when he was serving time in a halfway house for mail fraud in
New
York, Mr. Weiss conned a judge into letting him out to spend the sacred
Jewish
Passover holiday with his wife and five children. With his strict
four-day
pass in hand, Mr. Weiss then climbed into Donald Trump's Air Trump
helicopter
with a 23-year-old tart for a gambling fling at Trump Plaza Hotel and
Casino
in Atlantic City, where he was "comped" in a $700-a-night suite and he
dropped
$100,000. (The FBI's Most Wanted poster notes he "frequents gambling
casinos
and plays blackjack.")
Even more titillating were the prominent and respected Hasidic
Jewish
businessman's frequent appearances at Scores, the upscale Manhattan
peeler
parlour. National Heritage, fronted by lawyer Mr. Blutrich and associate
Lyle
Pfeffer, bought a major ownership stake in the strip club, and after
a
subsequent shakedown, they allegedly fronted for secret Gambino
family
partners. The extortionist was John Gotti Jr., the son of John Gotti
Sr.,
Gambino family head who died of cancer in jail this weekend.
As part of an agreement with their National Heritage guilty pleas,
Mr.
Blutrich and Mr. Pfeffer were placed in the federal witness protection
program
as they testified about mob dealings in the stripper industry.
U.S.
authorities claim some of National Heritage's plundered funds were
laundered
through Scores.
Meanwhile, Mr. Weiss's irrepressible taste for young skin led to his
ultimate
downfall. After fleeing the States with his Brazilian girlfriend, now 27,
Mr.
Weiss's scent was narrowed down in Vienna. Brazilian police, sniffing
around
in Sao Paulo, retrieved Weiss-related phone records from one hotel, found
an
odd call to the girlfriend's mother in a poor neighbourhood, and
led
international investigators to a chase which ended in Vienna. |
