Man accused of using makeup artist, disguise in fraud scheme
Source: Associated Press
Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press
Updated 3:48 pm, Thursday, January 25, 2018
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) A Louisiana man hired a professional makeup artist and disguised himself as an Orthodox Jewish businessman during a long-running scheme to scam investors and banks out of more than $96 million, according to a federal indictment issued Thursday.
David D. deBerardinis, 56, of Shreveport, represented himself as a businessman in the petroleum industry and used false identities, phony bank statements and bogus news articles to perpetuate a fraud scheme that began in 2008 and lasted until at least July 2016, the indictment says.
The 10-page document doesn't elaborate on how deBerardinis allegedly used a makeup artist and disguise in 2013 to get more investor funds from an unidentified equity group based in New York.
. . .
The indictment says deBerardinis represented himself as a businessman involved in the sale, trade and transport of fuel and falsely claimed he had an international shippers' license that had to be vetted by the FBI and U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Man-accused-of-using-makeup-artist-disguise-in-12525749.php
David D. deBerardinis
bucolic_frolic
(43,258 posts)You can tell the men from the boys by the size of their ... whoppers?
TheDebbieDee
(11,119 posts)But the average working-class conservative is more concerned about the family on SNAPs that may be earning $16/month too much to qualify for that program, because, you know, [sarcasm on] this country is going broke taking care of the POOR! [sarcasm off]
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)Didn't the investors do their own background checks of this guy? Those were people with money. Easy to do independent checks...like that license he supposedly had. I guess he was that good.
And they won't get their money back, I guess. What did he do with that kind of money? In an offshore account?