A former fugitive accused of falsely telling investors he was a billionaire, a Harvard MBA and a special forces veteran appears set to plead guilty on Wednesday in reference to an alleged $35 million fraud, a court filing suggests.
Would-be cannabis mogul Justin Costello, 42, is accused in federal court in Washington state of swindling 1000’s of investors and others with a slew of bogus and lavish claims about himself.
Costello, who fled after learning he had been indicted in late September, has been held without bail since early October when an FBI SWAT team arrested him in a distant area outside San Diego.
On the time, authorities said, he was carrying a backpack containing $12,000 value of gold bars, $60,000 in U.S. currency, $10,000 in Mexican pesos and an ID featuring his photo and another person’s name.
Costello later pleaded not guilty within the case.
But a court filing says Costello is now scheduled to seem for a change of plea hearing on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Such hearings are typically scheduled when a defendant plans to plead guilty.
Costello’s lawyer, Dennis Carroll of the federal defender’s office, wrote, “No comment at the moment,” when CNBC emailed him to ask in regards to the hearing.
Emily Langlie, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington, which is prosecuting Costello, declined to comment.
Costello is charged with 22 counts of wire fraud and three counts of securities fraud in his criminal case. He also faces civil charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a separate lawsuit accusing him and one other man of defrauding investors in a penny stock promotion scam.
Nick Brown, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, has previously said that Costello “allegedly told many tall tales to persuade victims to take a position thousands and thousands of dollars — money he then used for his own profit.”
Prosecutors say Costello used certainly one of his firms, Pacific Banking Corp., to illegally divert not less than $3.6 million to himself and other firms he owned while offering banking services for 3 marijuana firms.
Money and gold bars as detailed in court filing in US District court in San Diego in case of former fugitive Justin Costello.
Source: US District Court
In addition they accuse him of a scheme that cost greater than 7,500 investors about $25 million by making false claims about purported plans by certainly one of his firms to buy nearly a dozen other firms. Almost 30 investors lost $6 million after directly investing with Costello based on his false claims.
The indictment of Costello says that he falsely claimed to have graduated from the University of Minnesota, to have a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard, to have served two tours as a member of the U.S. special forces in Iraq and to have been wounded during that point.
Costello also falsely claimed to be a billionaire, to have managed money for wealthy individuals who included a Saudi sheikh and to have had “14 years of experience on Wall Street,” in response to the indictment.
