BOSTON—A Los Angeles man pleaded guilty today in federal court to charges that he defrauded investors out of more than $5 million.
Lyndon Lydell Parrilla, 32, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Court Judge George A. O’Toole, Jr., to seven counts of wire fraud and three counts of money laundering for his role in the operation of Green Tree Capital.
Had the case proceeded to trial, the government would have proven that Parrilla, through Green Tree, solicited more than $5 million from customers, purportedly for the purpose of trading in the foreign currency exchange (FOREX) market. Parrilla traded, at most, a small portion of customer funds in FOREX and instead spent most of it on personal expenses for himself and his employees. To hide this fraud, Green Tree continued to e-mail account statements to customers purporting to show trading gains and losses. In many instances, the account statements showed that customers’ accounts had gained value through successful FOREX trading. In fact, Parrilla defrauded the Green Tree customers out of almost all of the more than $5 million they entrusted to him. As part of this prosecution, the government has seized from Parrilla a Mercedes S63, which is subject to forfeiture.
Sentencing is scheduled for October 25, 2012. Parrilla faces up to 20 years in prison on the wire fraud counts and 10 years in prison on the money laundering charges, to be followed by three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which conducted a parallel civil investigation, referred the case to the United States Attorney’s Office and cooperated with criminal authorities.
************************************************************************
Report Securities Fraud by Calling 1-888-482-6825 or by visiting
www.reportsecuritiesfraud.net
No comments:
Post a Comment