Four to plead guilty to investment scheme...
Four to plead guilty
to investment scheme
Four more people, including a Costa Mesa and a Newport Beach
resident, were charged Friday and agreed to plead guilty in
connection with an investment scheme that scammed some 600 people of
more than $45 million.
Including the latest charges, seven employees of Newport
Beach-based DFJ Italia have been connected by the U.S. Department of
Justice to a so-called Ponzi scheme, Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael C.
Zweiback said. DFJ Italia promised investors high returns and falsely
claimed to be linked to an Italian royal family, Zweiback said.
The scheme started in 1996 and ran through the company’s collapse
in 2000, the justice department reported.
Investors ran the gamut from the very successful to those who
entrusted the company with their retirement money, Zweiback said.
“The loss literally meant these people were destitute,” he said.
Timothy G. Manno, a 36-year-old Newport Beach resident who was a
salesman for DFJ Italia, was charged Friday with conspiracy to commit
mail fraud and tax evasion. John Loy, a 42-year-old Costa Mesa
resident and chief financial officer for the company, is accused of
failing to supply information to the Internal Revenue Service by
understating his 1998 income.
Another chief financial officer, 40-year-old John Reardon of
Commack, N.Y., was charged with one count of failure to file a tax
return and allegedly failing to report $89,000 he earned at the
company.
Temecula resident and DFJ vice president Kenneth Kuczwaj, 46, was
charged with tax evasion, lying to Securities and Exchange Commission
investigators and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. Kuczwaj
was also known as “Capo di Asta,” or chief of staff, Zweiback said.
The company used titles commonly associated with Italian organized
crime families, including “Don” for the chief executive officer,
Zweiback said.
“I think that was the perception they tried to instill,” he said.
The four are expected to enter guilty pleas in federal court in
the next two weeks, Zweiback said.
Former DFJ Italia accountant and Corona del Mar resident Richard
Glenn Dunham, 57, pleaded guilty in April to mail fraud and tax
charges. He is scheduled for sentencing in June.
DFJ salesman Guy Scarpelli, a 44-year-old Neptune, N.J., resident
pleaded guilty in October to charges of conspiracy to commit fraud,
tax evasion and structuring cash transactions to avoid reporting
requirements.
-- Marisa O’Neil
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