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Thomas Lanzana, 51, used the money to buy things on Amazon.com, make payments to a luxury car dealer and jewelry retailer, and for golf expenses, the government charges.
Lanzana, now of Pawleys Island, South Carolina, first solicited $1.1 million from at least 45 customers to invest in what he claimed were highly successful, algorithm-based trading pools in foreign currency derivatives (forex) and other financial instruments, the government said.
Although he claimed to be a forex trader, he wasn’t, the indictment says.
To keep his customers’ trust, Lanzana sent them false account statements and tax documents, while posting bogus monthly account statements to his companies’ websites showing balances for forex trading accounts that didn’t exist – some in excess of $800,000, it alleges.
Lanzana misappropriated at least $350,000 in customer funds, using some to repay earlier investors "in the manner of a Ponzi scheme," the government said.
Federal agents in Park City, Kansas, busted Lanzana on wire and commodities fraud charges in August 2018. The case was then presented to a federal grand jury in Newark that returned Tuesday’s indictment.
The case was investigated by specials agents of the FBI and IRS-Criminal Investigation, who received assisted from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Division of Enforcement. Handling the case for the government is Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony P. Torntore of U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Craig Carpenito’s Cyber Crime Unit.
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