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Under a contract he was required to sign, the business owner agreed to pay $4,150 every two weeks for two years.
It wasn't until he'd already forked over $150,000 that the victim finally got wise to Mark Csantaveri, a 51-year-old Morristown resident with an alleged gambling habit, federal authorities said.
It turns out the restaurant owner was one of more than 50 victims who got swindled out of a combined $3.4 million, they said.
FBI agents arrested Csantaveri on Wednesday, March 20. A U.S. magistrate judge in Newark ordered that he remain detained on conspiracy to commit wire fraud charges following a hearing later that day.
Csantaveri and two unidentified partners operated a bogus debt relief service company for small businesses that only made their clients' situations worse, authorities said.
Csantaveri "induced victims to make regular payments to one of [his] businesses by falsely claiming that he would hold their money while negotiating favorable settlements with the victims’ creditors," U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said.
"Instead of using victim funds as promised, Csantaveri and his conspirators misappropriated the victims’ money for their personal use," the U.S. attorney said.
That included blowing $1.3 million at casinos in New Jersey and elsewhere, an FBI complaint on file in U.S. District Court in Newark says.
Csantaveri contacted the restaurant owner in College Park, MD in November 2020. After securing a deal, he used the man's $150,000 for his own purposes, then kept putting the victim off while lying to him, the complaint says.
''We were told [by a creditor] we would have a solid answer before noon tomorrow," Csantaveri allegedly wrote in an email response to a demand for repayment. "Will make sure to have a figure to discuss at that time."
The victim eventually got hold of the bank and found that no one there ever had any contact with Csantaveri, the FBI complaint says
The restaurant owner cut his own deal to settle his debt and stopped paying Csantaveri. But by then he'd already lost a serious chunk of change.Other victims were forced into similar deals, including a manufacturing company in Dayton, Ohio, an auto body shop in Clifton Township, MI, and business lenders in Corpus Christi, Texas, and Doral, the complaint says.
Sellinger credited special agents of the FBI with the investigation leading to the charges.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron L. Webman of his Criminal Division in Newark is handling the case for the government.
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