Hi Marty -- The post below is from another thread on SI. Have you seen this? Do you know the Frankel mentioned in this story? You may want to make sure you are not mistaken for this bloke.
Best regards, M
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To: Deeber (38658 )
From: Jay Fisk Monday, Jun 14 1999 12:50AM ET
Reply # of 38712
Major scam-ola unfolding as we speak:
sjmercury.com
Posted at 7:08 p.m. PDT Sunday, June 13, 1999
Up to $2.9 billion disappears with financier
Toledo Blade
Financier Marty Frankel, already suspected of bilking nearly $1 billion from insurance companies, may have taken three times as much money as originally estimated, investigators say.
In a new chapter to the nation's largest missing money case, investigators say they've discovered another $1.9 billion missing from a brokerage firm the elusive investor ran out of his stone mansion here. This time, the money wasn't taken from insurance firms but a charitable foundation.
FBI agents say they are still searching for the 44-year-old investor who vanished from his Greenwich, Conn., mansion in May.
''It's amazing, but the amount of missing money is still growing,'' said Maurice Nessen, who has been hired to try to recover most of the money. ''We're talking up to $3 billion.''
For the past month, FBI agents have been searching for Frankel, along with nearly $1 billion that's missing from a dozen insurance companies in five states. The companies all have been forced into receivership.
Now the probe has been expanded to include the whereabouts of the $1.9 billion Frankel allegedly invested on behalf of a charitable trust: the St. Francis of Assisi Foundation, Nessen said.
Nessen said Frankel, who used the name, David Rosse, established the charity trust last August in the British Virgin Islands. He then proceeded to use the foundation to shield millions of dollars over the past year, Nessen said.
''There was $1.9 billion that was invested on behalf of the charity in April, and now it's not there,'' said Nessen, a New York lawyer who was once a U.S. prosecutor for the southern district of New York.
He said Frankel concocted an elaborate scheme by pretending to be a devout Catholic who set up the charitable trust to help needy people. Using the alias, he persuaded three prominent Catholics to serve as trustees.
''This guy was a master. He knew the names of the saints. He had all these books on the Church. He used to tell people how much he wanted to help the poor and needy,'' Nessen said. ''It was a real con job.''
He now suspects Frankel was using the foundation to hide money from government regulators and the Internal Revenue Service.
The foundation trustees have since hired Nessen to try to recover the money so it can be placed with the charities for which it was intended. Nessen has been working with state regulators and federal agents, who believe Frankel has left the country.
The three foundation trustees, Thomas Bolan, the Rev. Peter Jacobs, and Edward Collins, were asked by Frankel to serve on the board of trustees of the foundation, but they did not oversee the investments or the spending, Nessen said.
''These are all good people who are totally flabbergasted over what happened,'' Nessen said. ''They thought they were taking part in a very noble effort. That's what's most distressing.''
As part of the scheme, Frankel was able to persuade the Vatican-backed organization, the Monitor Ecclesiasticus Foundation, to distribute money to charities on behalf of the St. Francis of Assisi Foundation, Nessen said. ''He was basically laundering money through the Church,'' he said.
Nessen does not know where the money was coming from. ''That's something for the FBI to discern.''
The Monitor Ecclesiasticus was founded by Pope Pius IX in the 19th century to publish the church canons and to disburse charity money around the world, Nessen said. Somehow, Frankel was able to convince the organization's officials to ''work with his foundation,'' Nessen said.
Jacobs, a well-known New York priest, could not be reached for comment.
When the FBI began its investigation into Frankel last month, agents filed an affidavit in federal court in Bridgeport, Conn., alleging that Frankel used several aliases and a phony corporation to bilk millions of dollars from nearly a dozen insurance firms.
In one case, he obtained $44 million from one of the insurance companies and then wired the money to a Swiss bank account.
Frankel, who was stripped of his stockbroker's license in Toledo, Ohio, seven years ago, has lived in Connecticut for the past six years, records show.
''On the one hand, you have these insurance companies that are all missing money, and now you have this charitable foundation with more missing money,'' Nessen said. ''There is a lot of work to be done.''
Investigators are still trying to figure out how Frankel was able to control so much money. He was banned from trading as a stockbroker by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 1992 after he was sued by two Toledo area investors. The suits, which were later settled, were filed after the investors said Frankel was unable to return $360,000 they gave him to invest.
While in Connecticut, he founded a brokerage firm, Liberty National Securities, even though it was not registered with the SEC. He then persuaded insurance companies based in Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Mississippi to invest their assets through his brokerage firm.
Frankel was last seen in his mansion in early May, a few days before an automatic fire alarm sounded in the home. By the time firefighters arrived, a file cabinet in the mansion was ablaze, and there were fires burning in two fireplaces. No one was home. The day after the fire, authorities said they received a call from a man identifying himself as Marty Frankel, who asked about the fire in his home. When they asked where he was calling from, the caller hung up.
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