Tag: Scheme

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Health

California Biotech Govt Is Responsible in $77 Million Blood-Testing Scheme

California Biotech Executive Is Guilty in $77 Million Blood-Testing Scheme

A biotech executive in California was convicted Thursday of orchestrating a $77 million scheme of making false and fraudulent claims for Covid-19 and allergy testing, federal prosecutors said.

CEO, Mark Schena, 59, served as president of Arrayit Corporation, a biomedical company that claims to have invented technology to test for any disease by pricking just a drop of blood on your finger. According to Arrayit’s website, its “microarray” technology could test for ovarian cancer, Parkinson’s disease, colon cancer and male fertility, among others.

Mr. Schena was found guilty on a total of nine federal charges, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud and healthcare fraud and three counts of securities fraud. He faces up to 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and 20 years for each count of securities fraud.

Beginning in 2018, Mr. Schena paid kickbacks and bribes to recruiters and doctors to perform allergy testing for 120 different allergens, including hornet stings, shrimp, peanuts, dairy and Bermuda grass, regardless of medical necessity, federal prosecutors said.

The US Department of Justice said he then developed “a misleading marketing plan” that falsely promoted the test’s accuracy “when in reality it was not a diagnostic test.”

According to the department, Mr. Schena filed fraudulent claims with Medicare and private insurance companies for unnecessary allergy testing. The company billed Medicare more per patient for blood-based allergy testing than any other lab in the United States, the Justice Department said. Some commercial insurers have been billed more than $10,000 per test.

When Arrayit’s allergy testing business collapsed during the coronavirus pandemic, the company turned its attention to Covid-19 testing, claiming to have developed a blood-based test using its alleged technology.

Because Arrayit falsely claimed its Covid test was more accurate than a PCR test, the US Food and Drug Administration had told Mr Schena that Arrayit’s test was not accurate enough to receive an emergency use authorization. Mr. Schena kept this rejection secret from the investors.

Mr. Schena referred to investors as the “father of microarray technology” and falsely stated that he was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize, the Justice Department said.

A phone number listed for the company was disconnected. An attorney for Mr Schena, Todd A. Pickles, declined to comment Friday.

Arrayit compared itself at least once to Theranos, the failed blood testing startup, on its Facebook page, writing that its technology could use drops of blood “that are 250,000 times smaller than the volume of the Theranos nanotainer,” according to the First Complaint of the Department of Justice in 2020.

Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, who once promised to revolutionize healthcare through a simple blood test, and Ramesh Balwani, a former top executive at the company, have been accused of exaggerating the capabilities of its blood-testing devices to appeal to investors and customers.

In January, Ms Holmes was convicted of four counts of fraud and in July Mr Balwani was found guilty of 12 counts of fraud.

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Politics

Florida man Stephen Alford, linked to alleged Gaetz plot, charged in $25 million scheme

Florida man Stephen Alford, linked to alleged Gaetz plot, charged in $25 million scheme

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) walks out of the committee room during a hearing with the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies, and Information System in the Rayburn House Office Building on May 14, 2021 in Washington, DC.

Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images

A man reportedly at the center of an alleged extortion plot involving Rep. Matt Gaetz and his family has been charged with engaging in a scheme to defraud a victim out of $25 million, in part by falsely promising he could secure a presidential pardon.

A grand jury charged Florida resident Stephen Alford, 62, with wire fraud in connection with the pardon scheme, carried out between March 16 and April 7, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Alford was also charged with attempting to stop the seizure of his iPhone by the government, said the grand jury indictment, which was signed by a U.S. magistrate judge on Aug. 18.

Alford was arrested earlier Tuesday and made his initial appearance in federal court, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Florida said in a press release. He faces up to 25 years imprisonment on the charged crimes, according to the prosecutors’ office.

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Gaetz, R-Fla., a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump, is being investigated by the Department of Justice about whether the 39-year-old congressman had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, The New York Times reported in March.

Gaetz, at the time that report came out, had linked that DOJ probe with the alleged $25 million “organized criminal extortion” scheme against him and his father, Don Gaetz.

Gaetz has denied all wrongdoing. He has not been charged with a crime.

A Times report from April 1, which described Alford as a real estate agent with a prior fraud conviction, said that he and a former Air Force intelligence officer named Robert Kent approached Don Gaetz about providing funding for an attempt to rescue an American hostage in Iran.

They reportedly told Don Gaetz, 73, that securing that hostage, Robert Levinson, could help clinch a pardon for his son in case he was charged with federal crimes.

Don Gaetz then hired a lawyer and contacted the FBI, the Times reported. Kent denied the allegations.

The grand jury indictment did not refer to Matt Gaetz, Don Gaetz, Levinson or Kent by their full names.

Instead, it said that Alford gave “Person A” the phone number of “D.G.” in order to “discuss the purported release of R.L. from captivity in Iran and a purported ‘current federal investigation’ into Family Member A of D.G.”

In a text message, “it was conveyed to D.G. that Person A’s ‘partner will see to it that [Family Member A] receives a Presidential Pardon, thus alleviating all his legal issues,” the indictment alleged.

Alford then wrote a letter, titled “Project Homecoming,” which made claims about an “‘investigation by the FBI for various public corruption and public integrity issues’ related to Family Member A,” as well as a “Presidential Pardon” and the request for $25 million to “‘immediately fund the release’ of R.L.,” according to the indictment.

The letter allegedly instructed that the money was to be “deposited into a trust account of Law Firm A.”

Alford’s letter also falsely asserted that his “‘team has been assured by the President’ that he will ‘strongly consider’ a ‘Presidential Pardon,'” or tell the Justice Department to quash any probe of “Family Member A” if R.L. is released from captivity, the indictment said.

Alford also falsely told D.G., “I will assure you that [Family Member A] will get off his problems” and claimed he could “guarantee” that that family member “would not go to prison.”

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Politics

Males charged in shell firm inventory fraud scheme, used SEC filings

Men charged in shell company stock fraud scheme, used SEC filings

Three men have embarked on a brazen scheme to “secretly kidnap” and take over dormant mailbox companies, whose shares they then fraudulently inflated to sell to ignorant investors, according to the indictment, which was unsealed on Friday.

The 2017-2019 men allegedly used fake resignation letters to take control of four mailbox companies, then used the Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR public filing system and fake press releases to fraudulently “pump up” their stock prices by seeking new business opportunities says.

Millions of shares of those stocks, which the defendants bought in many cases for less than 1 cent a share, were then sold over-the-counter by the men and others at gains of up to 900%, according to the court record.

The defendants – Mark Allen Miller, Christopher James Rajkaran and Saeid Jaberian, also known as Andre Jaberian – are charged in 15 cases of securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and wire transfer fraud.

The indictment states that Minnesota residents, Miller and Jaberian, as well as an unidentified person who is a relative of Miller, actually became the nominal CEOs and presidents of the companies affected by the scam.

Prosecutors believe the men made hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal profits just from the behavior described in the indictment, according to a spokeswoman for the US prosecutor in Minnesota.

The indictment, filed in the U.S. District Court in Minnesota, was first reported Friday on the Twitter account of Seamus Hughes, associate director of the Extremism Program at George Washington University.

Hughes regularly scours the federal court’s online archive system, PACER, for interesting criminal and civil litigation documents that were not previously reported.

The Securities and Exchange Commission did not immediately respond when CNBC asked if the agency had taken any action against the defendants and whether they had made changes to the EDGAR file system to prevent tampering by suspected fraudsters.

None of the defendants could be reached for comment.

Rajkaran, a resident of Queens, New York and Guyana, was arrested on Friday as a possible aviation hazard after appearing in court in Brooklyn, New York.

The other two defendants, Miller and Jaberian, are due to appear in federal court in Minnesota on July 2.

The four mailbox companies affected by the alleged conspiracy were Digitiliti, Encompass Holdings, Bell Buckle Holdings, and Utilicraft Aerospace Industries.

While the companies were supposedly doing business – online privacy services, computer software, debt collection, and aerospace – all were actually dormant mailbox companies “with no business or income to speak of,” the indictment said.

The companies had all stopped filing required documents with the SEC and the Secretary of State, but their shares were publicly traded on the over-the-counter market.

After the corporate quartet was identified, “the conspirators then bought shares in the dormant public letterbox companies at low prices on the OTC market,” the indictment said.

“The conspirators were able to buy hundreds of thousands or even millions of shares because the shares traded for a fraction of a penny per share.”

In the Digitiliti case, according to the indictment, Miller drafted a fake resignation letter and board minutes in September 2017, falsely stating that the company’s previous CEO had resigned and Miller had been appointed president and CEO.

Miller then filed with the SEC papers falsely identifying himself as the company’s new head and asked for “the login codes that allow him access to the company’s SEC-EDGAR filing account.”

This in turn “allowed Miller to make public filings with the SEC on behalf of the company.”

The EDGAR system is used by publicly traded companies to disclose material events, including quarterly and annual financial results, changes in management, and sales and purchases of significant amounts of company stock by insiders and others.

The indictment states that Miller bought 50,000 Digitiliti shares in November 2017.

“After Digitiliti’s kidnapping, the Defendant Miller used his control over the company to issue a false and misleading press release on behalf of the company,” the indictment stated.

“On or about July 9, 2018, Miller issued a press release falsely claiming that Digitiliti was ‘negotiating’ with a private company that is trying to ‘buy’ Digitiliti.”

The press release also falsely alleged that the private company “has a proven track record of generating revenue and succeeding in a highly desirable sector of the market,” according to the indictment.

Miller sold his 50,000 Digitiliti shares three weeks later.

During the alleged hijacking of Encompass Holdings from June to November 2017, Miller and Rajkaran together bought more than 40 million shares in the company at low prices, the indictment said.

As with Digitiliti, Miller claimed in a forged letter of resignation and board minutes that he had become president and CEO, the indictment said.

Rajkaran then began posting about the company on investorhub.com to “promote and raise the price of ECMH stock,” the indictment stated.

“For example, he announced that the new CEO is’ likely to have nearly 20 million real estate holdings”[s] and construction machinery … heard, he owns several shopping centers in Mn ‘, “the indictment reads.

Miller then released a press release falsely claiming that Encompass “had signed a letter of intent to acquire approximately $ 6.4 million in assets from DDG Properties. according to the indictment.

“None of that was true.”

The stock price rose in response to the allegations, and Miller shortly thereafter sold 12 million shares in the company at fraudulently inflated prices and made a gain of more than 300%, the indictment said.

Rajkaran achieved an earnings return of around 150% after dumping more than 34 million shares, according to the indictment.

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Politics

Fugees’ Pras, Jho Low charged in scheme to get Trump administration to drop probe

Fugees' Pras, Jho Low charged in scheme to get Trump administration to drop probe

In this April 23, 2015 file photo, Jho Low, Director of the Jynwel Foundation, poses at the launch of the Global Daily website in Washington, D.C.

Stuart Ramson | Invision for the United Nations Foundation

A federal grand jury has hit the fugitive Malaysia financier Jho Low and Fugees rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel with new criminal charges, accusing them of running a back-channel campaign to get the Trump administration to drop an investigation of Low and the 1MDB investment company and to have a Chinese dissident returned to China.

The new charges against Low, 39, and the 48-year-old Michel come six months after former President Donald Trump pardoned former top Republican fundraiser Elliot Broidy in connection with his guilty plea in October for his role in the illegal lobbying effort on Low’s behalf.

CNBC has reached out to Broidy’s lawyer to ask whether Broidy testified before the grand jury that indicted Low and Michel.

Because of his pardon, Broidy would be unable to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if called to testify at a grand jury investigating his activities related to Low and Michel.

Broidy, who is a Los Angeles-based businessman, was paid $9 million for his efforts on their behalf, with “the expectation of tens of millions more in success fees,” federal authorities have said.

Low and Michel were charged two years ago in federal court in Washington, D.C., with allegedly illegally funneling millions of dollars of Low’s money to support the 2012 presidential campaign of then-President Barack Obama.

Pras Michel of the Hip hop group the Fugees performs on August 1, 1996 in New York City, New York.

Al Pereira | Michael Ochs Archives | Getty Images

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The indictment issued Thursday by a grand jury in Washington accuses Low and Michel of conspiring with Broidy, a woman named Nickie Lum Davis and others “to engage in undisclosed lobbying campaigns at the direction of Low and the Vice Minister of Public Security for the People’s Republic of China, respectively,” according to the Justice Department.

The goals of those campaigns were “both to have the 1MDB embezzlement investigation and forfeiture proceedings involving Low and others dropped and to have a Chinese dissident sent back to China.”

That dissident is understood to be billionaire Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok and Miles Guo.

The new indictment also accuses Michel and Low of conspiring to commit money laundering related to the foreign influence campaigns, the Justice Department said. Michel is additionally charged with witness tampering and conspiracy to make false statements to banks.

Davis pleaded guilty in August to violating the foreign lobbying act as part of the Justice Department’s probe involving 1MDB. 

Also in August, Trump’s former senior advisor Steve Bannon was arrested on Guo’s yacht, off the coast of Connecticut, on federal criminal charges accusing him and others of defrauding thousands of donors through a crowdfunding campaign to privately build sections of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump pardoned Bannon on his last night in office in January, the same time he pardoned Broidy.

The investment bank Goldman Sachs last year entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department related to the conspiracy in which the bank and its Malaysian unit violated U.S. bribery laws by paying Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials to get business from 1MDB.

Goldman, which received around $600 million in fees for bond deals that funded the bank, agreed to pay more than $2.9 billion as part of that deferred prosecution agreement.

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Business

Bernard Madoff, Architect of Largest Ponzi Scheme in Historical past, Is Useless at 82

Bernard Madoff, Architect of Largest Ponzi Scheme in History, Is Dead at 82

More than money was lost. At least two people, desperate over their losses, committed suicide. A major Madoff investor suffered a fatal heart attack after months of litigation over his role in the system. Some investors have lost their homes. Others lost the trust and friendship of relatives and friends who had inadvertently put them at risk.

Mr. Madoff was not spared these tragic aftershocks. His older son Mark committed suicide at his Manhattan apartment early in the morning on December 11, 2010, the second anniversary of his father’s arrest. He has been characterized by his lawyer Martin Flumenbaum as an “innocent victim of his father’s monstrous crime who succumbed to two years of relentless pressure from false accusations and innuendos”. One of the last messages from Mark Madoff to Mr. Flumenbaum before his death was: “Nobody wants to believe the truth. Please take care of my family. “

In June 2012, Bernard Madoff’s brother Peter, a lawyer by training, pleaded guilty to tax and securities fraud charges related to his role as Chief Compliance Officer at his older brother’s company. However, he was not accused of knowingly participating in the Ponzi scheme. In December 2012, he forfeited all of his personal property to the government to compensate his brother’s victims and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. And on September 3, 2014, Andrew, Mr Madoff’s younger son, died of cancer at the age of 48. He had blamed the stress of the scandal for the return of the cancer he fought in 2003.

In addition to the number of people, professional reputations were also destroyed. More than a dozen prominent hedge funds and money managers, including J. Ezra Merkin and the Fairfield Greenwich Group, had to admit that they turned their clients’ money on to Mr Madoff and lost it all. Swiss private bankers, global commercial banks, and large accounting firms have all been dragged to court by clients who have relied on them to monitor their Madoff investments.

Securities Investor Protection Corporation, the industry-funded organization founded in 1970 to provide limited protection for broker clients, spent more on Madoff’s bankruptcy than on all previous liquidations combined – and was heavily attacked by victims who did the Felt they had been wrongly refused remuneration.

And for the Securities and Exchange Commission, which since at least 1992 has unsuccessfully investigated more than half a dozen credible tips about Mr. Madoff’s fraud program, it was the most humiliating failure in its 75-year history.

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Business

Zach Avery Charged With Operating Million Greenback Ponzi Scheme

Zach Avery Charged With Running Million Dollar Ponzi Scheme

The film “Bitter Harvest” from 2017 would not be considered a success by many definitions.

“It’s a bad sign if even the prayers in this movie suck,” noted one reviewer who contributed to the film’s 15 percent review of Rotten Tomatoes.

The United States grossed less than $ 600,000. But that did not mean that there was still no potential for money to be made abroad. All investors had to do was help acquire the distribution rights and a number of other films in Latin America, Africa, and New Zealand. Important distribution agreements with HBO and Netflix were about to be formalized. Once those were implemented, investors would see a return of at least 35 percent.

That’s the essence of what the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors call a Ponzi program run by Zachary J. Horwitz, a not particularly famous actor with a rather flamboyant home. Mr Horwitz, who went by the stage name Zach Avery, was arrested Tuesday for wire fraud. He is accused of scamming at least $ 227 million in investors and building his company’s relationship with HBO and Netflix.

“We claim that Horwitz promised extremely high returns and made them plausible by invoking the names of two well-known entertainment companies and fabricating documents,” said Michele Wein Layne, director of the SEC’s Los Angeles regional office, in a press release on Tuesday.

Prosecutors said the correspondence Mr. Horwitz forwarded to customers who included HBO and Netflix email addresses was as fictional as the subject of his most recent film, the horror film “The Devil Below” (Critic Score von Rotten Tomatoes: 0 percent). . According to Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, Horwitz did not appear in any of the 50 or so films that he promised would make millions for investors.

Mr. Horwitz was in jail on Wednesday, said Mr. Mrozek. See if you can reach out to other One in a Million Productions employees whose websites have the tagline “When Odds Are One in a Million. Be that ”, were unsuccessful. (The website was removed later on Wednesday afternoon.)

Mr. Horwitz’s attorney, Anthony Pacheco, did not respond to a request for comment.

The Ponzi program began to disintegrate when an investor wanted the money back in 2019 and couldn’t get it, Mrozek said.

For several years now, 1inMM – as the company puts its name – has found ways to pay investors. According to SEC court documents, not all films that investors believed helped purchase rights are listed, but the complaint includes an image of 1inMM’s “Library”; the 1989 Jean-Claude Van Damme film, “The Kickboxer “And the 2013 romantic comedy” The Spectacular Now “are included.

The way money can be made in the world of film distribution is by saying, “I’ll give you $ 100,000 for rights in Latin America,” Mrozek said for example, adding, “I’m going to HBO or to whoever and say, “Give me $ 200,000 to show the movie. ‘”

It’s possible that the company managed to acquire international distribution rights for a handful of films, or that it even started with good intentions, Mrozek said. What didn’t exist, however, was the relationship with HBO and Netflix that Mr. Horwitz shared with investors. That relationship essentially guaranteed them a return of 35 percent or more in six months or a year.

“I believed my investment was safe with HBO involved,” one investor told the SEC

First of all, Mr. Horwitz was able to keep his promises. In typical Ponzi fashion, previous investors received money from newer investors, Mrozek said. His clients continued to believe that it was wise to invest in tours of The Kickboxer in New Zealand and Latin America.

But at some point there wasn’t enough money to keep the illusion going – even with the help of the Johnny Walker Blue Label Scotch that Mr. Horwitz had sent to the directors, according to FBI agent John Verrastro, who laid out the scheme in a complaint. Mr. Horwitz also inappropriately used investor money on a $ 5.7 million home and $ 700,000 in fees on a prominent interior designer, according to the SEC

As of December 2019, 1inMM has been in arrears with more than 160 payments, according to court documents. A Chicago investor owed more than $ 160 million in capital and $ 59 million in profit wanted his return and couldn’t get it, Mrozek said. This investor contacted the authorities.

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Politics

GOP teams quiet as donor accused of working largest tax fraud scheme ever

GOP groups quiet as donor accused of running biggest tax fraud scheme ever

The billionaire, accused of running the largest tax fraud program in US history, has been a prolific donor to Republican groups and causes. The leaders of these organizations have remained silent about the federal charges against him.

Robert Brockman, former CEO of Ohio-based software company Reynolds & Reynolds, was accused in October of running a $ 2 billion tax fraud program.

Justice Department officials at the time said the businessman had been hiding capital gains through various offshore companies in Bermuda and Nevis and secret bank accounts for more than 20 years. Brockman has pleaded guilty to the alleged crimes.

Brockman’s most recent contributions to Republican committees came in 2017, ahead of the congressional mid-term election the following year, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Representatives of the organizations that are still active did not respond when asked whether they would like to plan a refund following the allegations or donate the full amount of the contributions to charity. The articles for 2017 still had to be published in the media.

In 2017, Brockman donated more than $ 80,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, the political campaign organization for House Republicans. The GOP lost the house to the Democrats, and Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Became a spokeswoman.

Reynolds & Reynolds is not listed as a Brockman employer on the FEC records showing the NRCC contributions, but the Texas address matches the location shown on other Brockman contributions. The mailing address is also listed on a CNBC-verified corporate registration form for Reynolds & Reynolds. The form, signed in April before Brockman was charged, lists him as CEO.

Brockman also gave more than $ 100,000 to companies affiliated with former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, including a six-digit check to the now-defunct joint fundraising committee of the Wisconsin Legislature. The Brockman NRCC donations were traced back to Ryan’s joint fundraising committee, which at the time helped raise funds for the Republican campaign arm.

Brockman also donated $ 5,000 to Prosperity Action, Ryan’s leading political action committee that has remained active since he left office. This contribution was transferred to Prosperity Action by Ryan’s joint fundraising committee.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Brockman and his legal team allege the 79-year-old billionaire cannot be tried because he has dementia and is unable to defend himself. Prosecutors reportedly replied that he could fake it and that a hearing on Brockman’s competence is due to take place in June.

A Brockman attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Democrats are already rushing to the lack of public GOP pushback against Brockman after funding some of their campaigns.

American Bridge, a Democratic super-PAC that specializes in opposition research and first featured on Brockman’s contributions to CNBC, used the episode to blow up the GOP.

“Congressional Republicans have spent the past four years coreing IRS enforcement and cutting taxes on billionaires while they were funded by the largest tax fraud in American history,” said Max Steele, a spokesman for American Bridge. opposite CNBC. “Even though they should return or donate the money, we know they won’t. How can a party blindly loyal to Donald Trump afford to stand up against billionaires who commit tax fraud?”

According to a report by Mother Jones, Brockman also funded a super-PAC in 2012 through companies he controls to support Mitt Romney as president.

All House seats will be available in the medium term in 2022, while at least 34 Senate seats are at stake, according to Cook’s political report. More than two dozen seats in the Democratic and Republican Houses are marked as raids.

Cook is considering the two open Republican Senate seats in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. No seats in the Democratic Senate are listed as an issue on the website, although seats in swing states of Arizona and Georgia are labeled “Lean Democrats.”

Both parties have been investigated in the past for receiving campaign contributions from controversial individuals and in some cases not returning them. John Childs, who was accused and plead guilty of soliciting prostitution in Florida, has continued to fund Republican campaigns.

Records show that Childs donated more than $ 3 million to Republican causes in 2020 alone, including committees affiliated with former President Donald Trump. There is also no record that these donations were returned.

Steve Wynn, a former Republican National Committee finance chairman, has been charged with sexual harassment, which he denied. The former CEO of Wynn Resorts has continued to contribute to Republican campaigns and there is no record of those contributions being returned.

Harvey Weinstein was a major Democratic donor for years before being accused and sentenced to jail for rape. The Washington Post reports that some Democrats contributed the donations for various purposes.

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Health

Three Males Are Accused in Scheme to Promote Covid-19 Vaccines

Three Men Are Accused in Scheme to Sell Covid-19 Vaccines

Three Baltimore men were accused by federal prosecutors of setting up a fake website to sell Covid-19 vaccines for $ 30 a dose.

The men, Olakitan Oluwalade, 22, and Odunayo Baba Oluwalade, 25, who are cousins, and Kelly Lamont Williams, 22, are charged with conspiracy for wire fraud, the US District Attorney’s Office said on Thursday.

Prosecutors said the men created a website similar to that of Moderna, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotechnology company, which received federal approval in December to distribute its Covid-19 vaccine.

The real website is modernatx.com, and the website created by the men that authorities have since confiscated was modernatx.shop. Prosecutors said the fake domain’s source code revealed that the creator used a tool to copy the real Moderna website.

“The logo, the markings, colors and texts on the fake domain were visually similar,” said a statement from the company’s actual homepage. But prosecutors said the bogus website had an addition, “You might be able to purchase a COVID-19 vaccine in advance,” with a link to “Contact Us.”

The men were caught after an undercover agent contacted the number on the fake website on Jan. 11 and completed a transaction for 200 doses of the vaccine for $ 6,000. Officials said the three men never had any cans.

The agent was ordered to transfer half of the funds to Mr. Williams’ account with the Navy Federal Credit Union. By January 15, agents had confiscated the fake domain and ransacked Mr. Williams’ home.

Investigators found texts between Mr. Williams and the cousins ​​discussing the system, according to court documents.

An agent used Mr. Williams’ phone to send a message to Odunayo Baba Oluwalade and sent some of the money from the exchange to the cousins, prosecutors said. Her two houses were also soon searched.

It was unclear how much money the men had cheated. A spokeswoman for the US law firm said Friday that she could not provide any further details on the charges than stated in the statement.

A representative from Moderna could not be reached immediately on Friday.

A lawyer, Richard Bardos, said he had been assigned to the Odunayo Baba Oluwalade case but declined to comment further, referring to a Maryland law prohibiting lawyers from speaking about ongoing cases.

Jonathan Van Hoven, a lawyer for Mr. Williams, declined to comment. The Maryland District Attorney’s Office said Olakitan Oluwalade has not yet been assigned a lawyer.

“As the public searches for vaccines to protect themselves and their families from Covid-19, scammers wait to take advantage of their desperation,” said James R. Mancuso, a special agent for Homeland Security Investigations. “We want to remind the public to exercise extreme caution online, especially when it comes to Covid-19 vaccines, treatments and protective equipment.”

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Politics

Twitter Troll Tricked 4,900 Democrats in Vote-by-Telephone Scheme, U.S. Says

Twitter Troll Tricked 4,900 Democrats in Vote-by-Phone Scheme, U.S. Says

A man known as a far-right Twitter troll was arrested on Wednesday and charged with spreading disinformation online that led Democratic voters to vote in 2016 by phone instead of voting.

Prosecutors accused 31-year-old Douglass Mackey of coordinating with co-conspirators to distribute memes on Twitter, falsely claiming that Hillary Clinton’s followers could vote by texting a specific phone number.

As a result of that campaign, prosecutors said, at least 4,900 unique phone numbers sent text messages to cast votes for Ms. Clinton.

Mr. Mackey was arrested Wednesday morning in West Palm Beach, Florida on what appears to be the country’s first criminal case concerning the repression of voters through the spread of disinformation on Twitter. He could not be immediately reached for comment, and an attorney for Mr. Mackey could not be identified immediately.

Ms. Clinton was not named in the complaint, but one person who was informed of the investigation confirmed that she was the presidential candidate described in the indictments.

“With Mackey’s arrest, we are realizing that those who would undermine the democratic process in this way cannot rely on the cloak of internet anonymity to evade responsibility for their crimes,” said Seth DuCharme, incumbent United States Attorney in Brooklyn.

In 2018, it was revealed that Mr. Mackey is the operator of a Twitter account under the pseudonym Ricky Vaughn, which empowered former President Donald J. Trump while spreading anti-Semitic and white nationalist propaganda.

Mr. Mackey’s account had such a large following that it topped the MIT Media Lab’s list of 150 Top Influencers in the 2016 election, ahead of Twitter accounts for NBC News, Drudge Report, and CBS News.

Twitter closed the account in 2016, a month before the election, for violating company rules by “participating in targeted abuse”. At that time, the account had around 58,000 followers.

Mr. Mackey faces an unusual charge: Conspiracy to violate rights, which makes it illegal for people to conspire to “suppress” or intimidate anyone from exercising a constitutional right such as voting.

The indictment provides for a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.