Former US President and 2024 Republican Presidential hopeful Donald Trump gestures about weight lifting as he speaks at a Republican volunteer recruitment event at Fervent, a Calvary Chapel, in Las Vegas, Nevada, July 8, 2023.
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WASHINGTON — A Recent Jersey man who had his prison sentence for running an enormous Ponzi scheme commuted by Donald Trump on the ultimate day of his presidency was charged Wednesday with orchestrating an identical scheme.
Eli Weinstein and 4 accomplices are accused of overseeing a latest Ponzi scheme that prosecutors say has defrauded 150 victims out of greater than $35 million.
Weinstein has now been charged with defrauding investors 3 times.
The primary got here in 2013, when he pleaded guilty to 45 counts of fraud and conspiracy for stealing over $200 million from investors. In 2015, he pleaded guilty in a second case, this time to committing wire fraud while he was on trial for the Ponzi scheme.
Weinstein had served eight years of his 24-year prison sentence when Trump granted him clemency in 2021, as one among 143 individuals who received either pardons or commutations during Trump’s final hours in office.
His release from prison capped a costly lobbying effort that enlisted people near Trump, including attorney Alan Dershowitz, to argue that Weinstein never got a good trial.
The campaign to get Trump to grant clemency to Weinstein was later the topic of a Recent York Times story, which detailed how Weinstein’s allies paid for access to numerous Trump insiders.
On the day of his commutation, the White House described Weinstein because the “father of seven children and a loving husband.”
“Upon his release, he could have strong support from his community and members of his faith,” said the official statement on his commutation.
At a press conference Wednesday announcing the newest charges, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said “Weinstein picked up right where he left off: stealing thousands and thousands of dollars from investors through an internet of lies and deceit.”
In accordance with the criminal grievance, Weinstein and his accomplices created fake investment funds and told prospective investors that their money could be used “to speculate in lucrative deals involving, amongst other things, COVID-19 masks, scarce baby formula, and first-aid kits sure for Ukraine.”
In an effort to hide his true identity and his criminal past, Weinstein used the name “Mike Konig” when communicating with investors.
Along with the criminal charges facing Weinstein, the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday filed a civil grievance against him and five other alleged co-conspirators.
“Again and again, the defendants took money from unsuspecting investors for fake deals and shuffled funds around to pay out earlier investors to present the misunderstanding that they were receiving real profits from those deals,” said Antonia Apps, director of the SEC’s Recent York Regional Office in a press release Wednesday.