A former investment firm vice president has pleaded guilty to running a $15 million Ponzi scheme that defrauded vulnerable individual investors and a Manhattan-based business.
Naim Ismail, 60, formerly of Irvine, California, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
According to court filings and statements made during court proceedings, Ismail fraudulently induced individual and corporate victims, including the New York-based subsidiary of an Afghanistan-based bank, to loan large sums of money to entities operated by Ismail and others.
Ismail promised investors a generous fixed annual rate of return and promised to return the investors’ principal on a specified timeline. However, Ismail did not invest these funds as promised and instead used investor funds to pay the so-called interest payments due to earlier investors in the scheme, as well as for his own personal expenses and investments.
During the course of the fraudulent scheme, Ismail deprived the scheme’s victims of over $15 million. Ismail’s guilty plea marks the end of a long investigation by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction and Homeland Security Investigations.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss praised the outstanding work of the investigators on the case, saying, ‘In spinning a web of lies, Naim Ismail and his co-conspirators gained, and took advantage of, the confidence of vulnerable individual investors as well as a Manhattan-based business, bilking them of millions of dollars in the process.’
Sentencing before Judge Analisa Torres is scheduled for November 17, 2021, at 11:00 a.m. Ismail’s case is being handled by the Office’s Money Laundering and Transnational Criminal Enterprises Unit, with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kiersten A. Fletcher and Jonathan E. Rebold leading the prosecution.
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Key Facts
- State: New York
- Category: White Collar Crime
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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