Category: Fraud and Crackdowns

Federal prosecutors have charged Puthugramam “Harish” Chidambaran, founder and former CEO of iLearningEngines, and former CFO Sayyed Farhan Ali “Farhan” Naqvi with running a years-long financial crimes scheme that, according to the indictment, “fabricated virtually all its customer relationships and revenues.” The company, which reached Nasdaq through a 2023 SPAC merger with Arrowroot Acquisition Corp.,…

Henry Paul Regan Jr., a New York man and former stockbroker, faces federal criminal charges for allegedly running a Ponzi scheme that collected more than $50 million from hundreds of ordinary investors. Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York say Regan sold products called “Next Level” and “Yield Wealth,” promising returns as high as…

A federal grand jury in Chicago indicted Illinois investment adviser John Myers on wire fraud charges for allegedly operating a Ponzi scheme through Sterling Capital Investments, LLC, deceiving clients out of $4 million between 2022 and 2025. The indictment, filed June 4 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois under case number…

Adrian Lawrence, a Jamaican national who went by the alias “Mastermind,” was sentenced to 66 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $5.4 million in restitution for running a sweepstakes fraud scheme that drained older Americans of their savings. Lawrence impersonated Publishers Clearing House representatives, told victims they had won large cash prizes, and…

A courier working a nationwide gold-bar fraud scheme was arrested in Michigan after an elderly widow handed him a package of chocolate coins instead of the $700,000 in gold bars she had been pressured to surrender. The swap, which led directly to the courier’s detention at the Kent County Correctional Facility on false-pretenses charges under…

Devin Ward Elder, a San Antonio CEO, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud tied to a scheme that raised $69.5 million from roughly 345 investors between January 2023 and March 2025. Elder promoted 17 real-estate investment offerings and funneled approximately $8.8 million in new investor money to pay earlier participants, creating the appearance…

Four executives tied to a Toledo-based investment firm were sentenced in Lucas County Common Pleas Court for running a Ponzi scheme that collected $72 million through more than 700 investments from at least 200 people over roughly a decade. Richard Scheich, James Delverene, Doug Miller, and a fourth defendant faced the court after pleading guilty…

The machines look harmless enough, tucked into the corner of a gas station or a convenience store beside the lottery terminal and the air pump. They accept cash and convert it to cryptocurrency in minutes, and that speed is exactly what has made them a favorite tool of scammers who prey on older Americans. In…

The scam that unraveled in Florida this year followed a script that has become disturbingly common: a phone call warning of a legal emergency, a caller claiming to be a federal agent, and a demand that the target hand over cash to make the problem disappear. What made this case notable was the physical courier…

The scheme worked in the most personal way imaginable. Older Americans, convinced their savings were in danger, packed bundles of cash into boxes and shipped them across the country to people they had never met, believing they were protecting their money rather than handing it to criminals. Federal prosecutors say one man sat near the…