July 7, 2020
After being found guilty of eighteen fraud-related felonies, Todd Michael Ficeto, a former Beverly Hills stockbroker, has been sentenced to 6 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $216 million in restitution to investor victims for his role in a massive penny stock fraud scheme. From 2004 to 2007, Ficeto and co-conspirators fraudulently manipulated penny stocks to exaggerate the reported profits of a co-conspirator’s hedge fund, Absolute Funds. When the scheme unraveled, Ficeto attempted to conceal the fraud by lying to investigators from the Securities Exchange Commission and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. One of his alleged co-conspirators—hedge fund owner Florian Wilhelm Jürgen Homm—has fled to Germany as a fugitive from justice. USAO CDCA
Tagged in: Criminal Proceedings, Financial and Investment Fraud, Securities Fraud,