Soprano’s Scam
A cool $20 million was duped out by investors on a boiler room stock operation ran by a Staten Island mobster.
Michael Scarpaci, associate of the famous Gambino crime-family, pleaded guilty inj a Brooklyn Federal Court yesterday. Federal prosecutors believed that Scarpaci ran the stock swindle of the crime-family acting as an investment-adviser fraud.
Their operation disguised itself in blue-chip trappings with a Web site boasting of executives educated at Harvard and Penn’s Wharton School of Business. This was known as the Gryphon Financial. They have created a dummy headquarters for which they will tell their investor. Supposedly located on Wall Street with satellite offices in London and Sydney, Australia, their real office, however, is at Staten Island. The firm also produce investment newsletters and claimed to have a team of expert financial analyst and has an overall asset of $1.4 billion. Calling himself as “Michael Stern,” Scarpaci displayed a genuine talent in selling stock.
None of it was true.
The boiler room was employed with wise guys running in an illegal high-pressure tactics and selling stock to unsuspecting clients, charging them with high fees.
The scene echoed a plot line in the second season of “The Sopranos” where mob boss Tony’s nephew, Christopher Moltisanti, operates a pump-and-dump stock office for the crime family.
Charged with extortion, loan-sharking and running a gambling operation, Scarpace, 34, was sentenced to life imprisonment. Yesterday, however, Scarpaci, admitted that the firm was a scam from 2007 until this past spring. With his admission, a plea bargain was granted in favour to him. Scarpaci is now facing five years in prison and mandatory restitution of at least $855,000.


