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"Prosecutors say Moskowitz told the FBI in February 2017 that Weissman approached him and said Tepfer wanted $1 million or he would go to the authorities with incriminating information. The demand eventually rose to $7 million, according to the government."
So the FBI can direct resources toward a $7 million extortion attempt by insiders, but still haven't done anything about the $390 million stolen from shareholders by members of the SpongeTech Stock Distribution network who were not company insiders.
Thanks, dalessan!
Atty Cops Plea In Extortion Case Tied To Pump-And-Dump
By Stewart Bishop
Law360, New York (June 12, 2019, 8:34 PM EDT) -- A Long Island personal injury attorney on Wednesday admitted to taking part in what prosecutors say was a scheme by a convicted securities fraudster to try to extort $7 million from a former co-defendant and launder the funds through a religious charity.
At a morning hearing before U.S. District Judge Dora Irizarry in Brooklyn, Mark "Meyer" Weissman, 55, of Lawrence, New York, copped to conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, namely, the enforcement of a $12.7 million restitution order against Weissman's friend Andrew Tepfer, who was convicted along with several others of a $21 million pump-and-dump scheme involving Spongetech Delivery Systems Inc.
Prosecutors say Tepfer enlisted Weissman, along with Queens rabbi Igal Haimoff, to aid him in a plot to shakedown former Spongetech Chief Financial Officer Steven Moskowitz. Tepfer used Weissman as a go-between to convey a threat to Moskowitz that Tepfer would go to the authorities with unspecified incriminating information if he wasn't paid as much as $7 million, according to the government.
"I'm sorry for getting involved in this at all," Weissman told Judge Irizarry. "It was wrong for me to seek to help a friend by violating the law."
Prosecutors and Weissman's lawyers estimate he's facing an advisory sentencing guidelines range of six to 12 months in prison. However, Judge Irizarry, who has final sentencing authority, wondered aloud whether a downward adjustment to the guidelines for playing a minor role was warranted and noted the lack of an upward adjustment for abuse of a position of trust.
Weissman waived his appeal rights as long as any term of imprisonment imposed is a year or less.
Prosecutors say Moskowitz told the FBI in February 2017 that Weissman approached him and said Tepfer wanted $1 million or he would go to the authorities with incriminating information. The demand eventually rose to $7 million, according to the government.
Moskowitz, who with Tepfer is jointly and severally liable for the $12.7 million in restitution from the pump-and-dump case, exchanged texts and had a series of recorded meetings and phone calls with Weissman in which they talked about how to transfer the money without it being diverted to satisfy the judgment.
Settling on a purported plan to have Moskowitz transfer the money through associates in Switzerland, Tepfer — who has pled not guilty — is said to have recruited rabbi Haimoff to funnel the cash through his charity, under the guise of a donation to fund the construction of a yeshiva.
As part of the alleged rouse, Weissman and Haimoff — who in February copped to money laundering conspiracy — crafted fake communications that were exchanged with Moskowitz's "Swiss" contact, who was actually an undercover FBI agent, according to the government.
An attorney for Weissman, Henry Mazurek, declined to comment after the plea hearing.
In a statement, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Richard P. Donoghue, said Weissman attempted to impede restitution for victims of a massive fraud.
"This office will vigorously prosecute corrupt attorneys who assist in violations of the law," Donoghue said.
Weissman is due to be sentenced on Nov. 4.
Tepfer dodged any prison time for the underlying Spongetech fraud case, but was ordered to be held jointly and severally liable for the $12.7 million restitution order. He is currently in custody for violating the terms of his bail in the current case, and potentially faces further penalties for violating his probation.
The government is represented by Nathan Reilly of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York.
Weissman is represented by Henry E. Mazurek and Evan Lipton of Meister Seelig & Fein LLP.
The case is U.S. v. Haimoff et al., case number 1:18-cr-00524, in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
--Additional reporting by Pete Brush. Editing by Michael Watanabe.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
Read more at: https://www.law360.com/legalethics/articles/1168536?utm_source=shared-articles&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=shared-articles?copied=1
If you want to know about stale claims from the SPNG scam, contact Jay Booth who is the only one still tilting at the SPNG windmill.
Jay P Booth
195 Private LN #4436 Rhome, TX 76078
(940) 627-2128
You can use PACER to retrieve his numerous letters to various judges in various courts and such over the many years, to no avail whatsoever. PACER is free as long as you don't download more than $15 in searches and pages per quarter.
Or just ask Jay, he ought to be able to email them all to you, including his most recent failed FOIA request.
You won't be able to gett any munny of course, butt the reading is worth it for the laffs alone.
Or you can send a refund request to MINDY MOSKOWITZ - the CONtact info is in he iBox. You won't gett any munny there either, butt sometimes just sending a refund demand cam make one feel better about the loss.
If you want to know about stale claims from the SPNG scam, contact Jay Booth who is the only one still tilting at the SPNG windmill.
Jay P Booth
195 Private LN #4436 Rhome, TX 76078
(940) 627-2128
You can use PACER to retrieve his numerous letters to various judges in various courts and such over the many years, to no avail whatsoever. PACER is free as long as you don't download more than $15 in searches and pages per quarter.
Or just ask Jay, he ought to be able to email them all to you, including his most recent failed FOIA request.
You won't be able to gett any munny of course, butt the reading is worth it for the laffs alone.
Or you can send a refund request to MINDY MOSKOWITZ - the CONtact info is in he iBox. You won't gett any munny there either, butt sometimes just sending a refund demand cam make one feel better about the loss.
If you want to know about stale claims from the SPNG scam, contact Jay Booth who is the only one still tilting at the SPNG windmill.
Jay P Booth
195 Private LN #4436 Rhome, TX 76078
(940) 627-2128
You can use PACER to retrieve his numerous letters to various judges in various courts and such over the many years, to no avail whatsoever. PACER is free as long as you don't download more than $15 in searches and pages per quarter.
Or just ask Jay, he ought to be able to email them all to you, including his most recent failed FOIA request.
You won't be able to gett any munny of course, butt the reading is worth it for the laffs alone.
Or you can send a refund request to MINDY MOSKOWITZ - the CONtact info is in he iBox. You won't gett any munny there either, butt sometimes just sending a refund demand cam make one feel better about the loss.
I had 50k shares with a broker that got bought out by wang. Wang ate my shares years back. Etrade still shows my 102k with them. Whatever happened to settlements and investors cases?
When will Jay Booth bring the notorious SPNG blue sheets and scan and post them online?
Is he hiding something?
Was a time back. Can't even remember. That's about the time I started trading in the Penny market. Oh the memories indeed.
Man, I remember this stock way back in the day.
STEVEN YEHUDA MOSKOWITZ has a new pergola. Jay Booth just has LOSSES.
Mosky won!
And now it's DEAD. Oh well, it was a fun life-waster while it lasted.
It was submitted to the SEC. It concerned disgorgement in the SpongeTech case, such as was ordered against Dennis Ringer.
haven't been following recently
can you tell us a little about this FOIA request?
to whom?
about what?
thanks
Oops! Looks like JAY PATRICK BOOTH has some legal prollems of his own besides tilting at the SPNGQ windmill - if these are correct:
https://www.mylife.com/jay-booth/e64723270836
Don't expect JAY to get any munny from the SPNGQ scam. With that criminole history, if accurate, he's prolly an in-on-it.
Welp, gotta go work on the pergola now ...
I am likely to do that
If you send me a check for the imminent recovery I will convey my rights over to you, it's a win win.
Not staying tuned.
Great way to waste time. How about another few letters to Steve Mnuchin? And Judge Izarry hasn't heard about SPNGQ in awhile - not even a Christmas or Chanukah card. That's no way to build a coalition.
Meanwhile, MINDY MOSKOWITZ has a nice new pergola, STEVEN YEHUDA MOSKOWITZ has received 'potentially life-saving medical procedures', and their hovel in Flushing is having a facade done this Spring so it will look like a double-wide cheap imitation of the Alamo.
And the former SPNGQ shareholder-victims still have nott received the pork chops nor the donuts from JAY BOOTH.
Life goes on, butt the SPNGQ chuckles remain.
I had until Thurs, Jan 24th, to file an appeal on the denial of my FOIA. However, the online appeal form was unavailable until after the close of business on Fri, Jan 25th.
On Monday, Jan 28th, the partial government shutdown had concluded, and the online appeal form was once again available. I will have to submit an entirely new FOIA, if I choose to go that route again. I am likely to do that.
When will JAY PATRICK BOOTH bring the donuts?
MINDY MOSKOWITZ is holding an open-pergola party and we need those donuts.
Looks like it has seen better daze. That is a candidate for the dumpster. Didn't age well for only 10 years old. Looks like the polymer it's made of has oxidized badly. Prolly is brittle too now.
Only SPNGQ defrauded shareholder-victims getting any munny ain't never happening. The restitution list is closed. All shareholders who recovered any munny were on that list. The rest gett bupkis.
BTW, the pergola that STEVEN MOSKOWITZ had built for Mindy is looking fine. This Spring he's having a facade done on the front of their home in Flushing new Kew Gardens so it will look like a really bad imitation of the Alamo.
Mindy is also getting a PET scan ... for their dawg, Moses Mookie. They are putting him through a JFK airport scanner. He swallowed STEVEN's dradle.
STEVEN thanks the SPNGQ victims for the munny that is making this possible for him.
From June until October, I was repeatedly trying to get the SEC to answer questions in regards to disgorgement. This included the submission of a FOIA request in July which read, in parts, as follows: "Under certain circumstances, I believe that transferring disgorged money to the federal government, instead of returning that money to the investors from whom it was stolen, is nothing less than a conversion of shareholder funds. The circumvention of other investor rights may also rise from this practice...It is my objective to trace these transferred funds through disbursement by the federal government, and to inform the public of my findings."
(Re: Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. § 552
Request No. 18-02641-FOIA)
I ultimately received an adverse determination from the SEC, and I have a right to appeal that decision by January 24, 2019. I have not decided whether to file an appeal, or to simply file a new FOIA, or to take some other course of action.
A bit of the back and forth discussion I had with the SEC is discussed by the SEC's research specialist in her determination letter. "By email dated September 28, 2018, I (the SEC research specialist) memorialized a
telephone conversation that we had on that same day, where you
were advised that your response failed to clarify the records or
information that you are seeking relating to “disgorgement” for
“2008 till present.” You responded by email on October 9, 2018,
asking multiple additional questions, but still not clarifying
what records you wanted. Your email also stated that “I want to
know all details regarding the SEC's recovery of funds stolen from me, and what the SEC has chosen to do with the funds they
have recovered, which should have been returned to me.”
Anyway, that process took up the last half of the year, for the most part. And it will take all the time going forward that it needs to take.
This Thanksgiving, MINDY MOSKOWITZ gives thanks for the pergola that hubby STEVEN YEHUDA MOSKOWITZ paid for with the funds he swindled from JAY PATRICK BOOTH and other SPNGQ shareholder-victims.
Mosky's next trick will be putting a facade on his Flushing hovel so that it looks like a double-wide trailer with an Alamo fronting.
So many sheckels and so little time to spend it all.
When will JAY PATRICK BOOTH bring the pork chops to the SPNG shareholder-victims?
All hat, no cattle.
Jay Booth will save all SPNGQ investors and get them full refunds plus interest. In fact, he will gett a judgement for all of their expected profits as well. The SEC will pay for all the losses and lost profits claims.
Jay's latest sternly worded letter is almost ready to send. All that is needed is for shareholder-victims to set up a GoFundMe to pay for an envelope and a stamp.
Jay Booth is still working on it.
shajandr Tuesday, 06/06/17 03:17:07 AM
Re: cowtown jay post# 346346
Post # of 346530
Bummer for you, dude. No munny ever comin' from SPNG fraud to you. SPNG died in 2010 - 8 years ago.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-rules-to-limit-sec-power-to-recover-profit-from-fraud/2017/06/05/13fc02b8-4a02-11e7-a186-60c031eab644_story.html
The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously limited the federal government’s power to recover the profits made from illegal behavior.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the Securities and Exchange Commission must abide by a five-year statute of limitations in seeking “disgorgement” from those whose fraudulent actions resulted in illegal profits.
It is a favorite tool of the federal government; in recent years, the SEC took in nearly $3 billion in disgorgements, more than double what it received in penalties, according to court filings.
The question for the Supreme Court was whether disgorgements were a form of a penalty, which is subject to the statute of limitations, or a remedy for unjust enrichment that simply restores the offender to the situation he would have been in if he had not acted illegally, as the government claimed.
It appeared not to be a close call to the justices.
“SEC disgorgement bears all the hallmarks of a penalty: It is imposed as a consequence of violating a public law and it is intended to deter, not to compensate,” wrote Sotomayor, who noted that the money received often goes to the government rather than victims of the fraud. “The 5-year statute of limitations therefore applies when the SEC seeks disgorgement.”
It was one of the first cases heard by new Justice Neil M. Gorsuch after he was sworn in in April, and he joined his new colleagues in overturning a decision from his old court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver.
The case was brought by Charles R. Kokesh, a Santa Fe, N.M., businessman who was convicted of misappropriating money from four investment companies he controlled from 1995 through 2009 and using the proceeds for a lavish lifestyle.
A judge in 2015 ordered him to pay a $2.4 million civil penalty. But because the SEC has interpreted disgorgement to have no time restraint, the judge said Kokesh must also pay $35 million, the calculated amount of illegal profits dating back to the initiation of his illegal behavior.
With a five-year limit, Kokesh’s disgorgement would be reduced to about $5 million.
Dixie L. Johnson, a securities enforcement lawyer in Washington, said the ruling “shatters” the SEC’s view of disgorgement.
“Those who previously paid disgorgement purportedly for ill-gotten gains more than five years after the relevant violation will be reviewing their situations against this case to determine whether the disgorgement award should have been allowed,” she said in a statement.
My efforts do, indeed, continue. My current effort has been underway since July 5th.
Yes, indeed. Jay Booth will obtain huge financial rewards for all the poor SPNGholders.
Bwahahahahaha!!!
Mosky and the Mutt will turn it all around eventually. Patience grasshopper.
ATTENTION ALL SPONGERS!!!!!!
Your munny remains G-O-N-E. It will remain GONE forever.
Nott comin' back.
Won't even send a postcard.
Nuffin 4U.
ATTENTION ALL SPONGERS!!!!!!
Your munny is G-O-N-E.
Nott comin' back.
Won't even send a postcard.
Funny to see that board still active.
Fallen to this scam years ago
ATTENTION ALL SPONGERS!!!!!!
Your munny is G-O-N-E.
Nott comin' back.
Won't even send a postcard.
Absolutely totally a different thing.
Especially in size. In this one $100K in to it the guy was busted and done.
And believe it or not doesn't seem anyone was arguing against the SEC that others were trying to destroy their great company, etc., etc, - and siply too the advice and the scam failed.
Sorry, that case is nott related in any way to SPNG.
A Final Judgment in this related case was entered today. A penalty equal to the amount of disgorgement, plus interest, was imposed.
What will become of the money recovered? The SEC "...reserved issues relating to monetary relief for subsequent determination."
https://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2018/lr24167.htm
The SpongeTech story hasn't even begun to be told.
cowtown jay, the Spongetech story has been complete for a long time now.
Good luck.
I'm anxiously awaiting tomorrow's release of the DOJ IG Report. Of particular interest to me will be any details regarding Loretta Lynch and lack of enforcement, issues relevant not only to the Clinton case, but to SpongeTech's case, as well.
Totally agree! 10/10. Anybuddy who could nott see the obvious scam that SPNG was - after all the REDD FLAGGS and obviously nonsensical sales figures for some gottdammpt SPONGES frankly should stick to bank saving accounts and a piggy bank.
Nobuddy with a lick of common sense could possibly have bleeved SPNG was legitimate. So the peeps in the stock were simply playing the gambler's game of flipping known crap to sumbuddy else at a higher price - the hot potato game a/k/a the musical chairs game. And then the SEC and DOJ showed up one fine morning and suspended the turdstock and arrested the CEO and CFO ... and the flippers playing the 'greater fool' game lost it all. As they should have.
STEVEN YEHUDA MOSKOWITZ and MICHAEL METTER hauled enuff jack from this rig job/scam that they're both set for life. Mosky stashed his cash in Switzerland and Israel in names of family members and friends. Metter likely stashed some of his haul in Switzerland too. Good for them - they took it from the greedy pennyflippers for the most part, and from people who can't manage munny and would have just lost it in some other pennyscam or investment swindle anyway.
STEVEN YEHUDA MOSKOWITZ recently used some of the haul he made from the greedy flippers to pay for the building of a pergola for his wife in their backyard in Flushing. He knows how to take care of his fambly and nott squander his munny foolishly chasing pennyscams and playing musical chairs flipper games.
Munny always seeks stronger and wiser hands - natural selection. Those who gott scalped by SPNG gott culled from the herd of investors, as it should be - and is.
Thank you Mosky and Mike. I will be forever grateful for the new SUV I bought through your brilliant tactics. Hope you stashed away enough for years to come. You deserve it for pulling it off and walking away. Pure genius.
STEVEN YEHUDA MOSKOWITZ is enjoying his Memorial Day Weekend sitting with his wife in the new pergola that SPNG shareholder-victims paid for with their LOST MUNNY.
Meanwhile, the contractors should finish a new front porch with a gabled roof on the MOSKOWITZ's Flushing hacienda.
Ahhhhh ... life is good for STEVEN YEHUDA MOSKOWITZ and MINDY. That swindled SPNG munny makes their lives so much easier and more interesting.
In a search for a contractor to replace my roof I had 5 estimates provided from 5 different companies. STEVEN MOSKOWITZ of Renovex LLC gave me the best price by over a couple thousand dollars. This was too good to pass on, so I hired Renovex to do the job.
Steve immediately demanded 60% of the cost to be paid upfront. I was hesitant so I told him once the material arrives on site I would give him the 60%. He rudely told me "I am not a bank, and I won't lay out that kind of money." We eventually came to an agreement. The following day, 80% of the material arrived and so I paid him in good faith. That was my second mistake. My first mistake was hiring him in the first place. I was initially promised that the entire job would be completed in 3-5 work days. Over the course of 3 weeks I've heard one excuse after the other. It went from bad weather (which never came) to family emergencies, to sick days (6 in a row, with no communication) This company left my roof unprotected which lead to a semi-major leak in multiple areas of my home. I am currently in the process of filing a claim against his insurance, which I'm beginning to think is fraudulent. I have gotten no where. After over three weeks from the start date they were only competent enough to complete 45% of the job. I had finally had enough of the excuses and contacted Steve. I told him I have no other recourse at this point. I need to hire someone else to complete the job. His response was, "Why didn't you tell me that my workers haven't been there in over 5 days? You are just trying to steal my materials and I will see you in court!" As if I'm responsible for managing his labor force. Save yourself the headache, don't use Renovex LLC for ANYTHING! It was a waste of my time and money in the long run. It was the least professional management I've ever dealt with in my entire life. PLEASE DON'T BE TEMPTED BY THE LOW COST, IT IS A FACADE THAT IS WELL WORTH AVOIDING!
Ross G. and 1 other voted for this review
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