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White Plains resident James Doyle, 72, and Carl Carro, 59, of Walton, Delaware, the purported managing directors of headhunting companies Endeavor Management Solutions and Endeavor Consultancy, have been charged in a 42-count indictment for their roles in the schema.
Specifically, the two were charged with multiple counts of money laundering, grand larceny, securities fraud, and scheme to defraud.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said that between January 2012 and December last year, Carro and Doyle solicited investments for their companies from more than 50 victims across the country.
While seeking investments, it is alleged that the pair misrepresented to clients that Endeavor was a headhunting firm hired by prestigious clients to find candidates for openings on their boards of directors.
James said that Carro and Doyle are charged with luring investors with false promises of interviews for board positions, then offering purported no-risk investment opportunities in their firm.
The two allegedly promised their victims that investments would be held in an untouched cash reserve fund that purportedly held more than $1 million and guaranteed a 10 to 20 percent return on investments after 30 days.
It is alleged that instead of holding the investments in a cash reserve fund, Carro and Doyle deposited investor monies into various accounts, none of which ever had a balance of more than $200,000.
An audit by the Attorney General’s Office found that investor funds were used for personal expenses and to pay back previously defrauded investors.
According to the audit, Carro and Doyle spent nearly $500,000 on cash withdrawals, more than $200,000 to pay credit card bills, more than $57,000 on pet expenses, and exhausted more than $350,000 to pay previously defrauded investors, including over $170,000 in restitution to victims in Carro’s prior criminal cases.
Carro and Doyle are accused of stealing between $15,000 and $30,000 from each of the more than 50 victims from 2012 to the present, with total losses to all victim-investors exceeding $1 million.
In an effort to further their scheme, James said that Carro and Doyle used a pattern of excuses and delay tactics to obscure the fact they couldn’t repay investors.
Tactics allegedly included:
- Telling investors that the bank would not release their funds, when in fact the funds were already depleted;
- Alleging that repayment checks were in the mail, only for investors to receive empty envelopes;
- Creating a fictitious attorney to act as in-house-counsel for Endeavor during disputes with investors over the return of their investments.
It is further alleged that Carro and Doyle used bank accounts at multiple banks in an effort to disguise and conceal the true source and ownership of the money.
The complaint further charges that the proceeds were laundered in a Ponzi-like manner to make repayments to previously defrauded investors, without revealing that the actual source of the repayments was new funds from newly defrauded investors.
While Carro and Doyle repaid some investors a very small percentage of their investment, most investors received no repayment at all.
“When New Yorkers put their hard-earned savings into an investment, they expect their money to work for them, but the greed of the operators of these corporations never gave victims a chance to make a profit,” James said. “After nearly a decade, the Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Carl Carro and James Doyle fell like a house of cards, robbing most victims of thousands of dollars.
Carro and Doyle were charged with:
- Two counts of money laundering;
- 19 counts of grand larceny;
- 20 counts of securities fraud under the Martin Act;
- Scheme to defraud.
Following their arraignment, Carro was remanded into custom, and Doyle was released. The two are scheduled to appear in court later this year to respond to the charges.
“Today, we’re holding these two men accountable for cheating investors and using investment funds to enrich and dig themselves out of a hole,” James added. “My office will continue to use every resource at its disposal to hold accountable anyone who tries to cheat innocent New Yorkers out of their hard-earned savings.”
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