Acting US Attorney Laurie Magid
Six people were charged yesterday with an alleged scheme to use dummy corporations, fake brokerage accounts, and virtual offices to steal $41 million from securities class action settlement funds.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that Laurie Magid, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, announced that “the ring, which also included a lawyer, went to great lengths to make the claims seem legitimate. Another member of the group, she said, even traveled to Singapore to mail documents to help make a fake company, KimCorp., appear real in its claim.”
Five people were indicted on charges of mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering, and one was reportedly accused in a criminal information of the same charges, possibly a prelude to a guilty plea, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
The defendants were allegedly stealing from settlement funds set up to pay investors in three cases from the 1990s: the Nasdaq market-makers antitrust case; Cendant Corp.; and BankAmerica Corp.
