March 16, 2017

New York announced that Lawrence D. Rosenbaum, 65, of Albany, was sentenced on multiple crimes in connection with a sweeping indictment charging him with fraudulently soliciting over $1 million from numerous investors in a securities fraud scheme between 2006 and 2012. Rosenbaum is an insurance broker who owned and operated Rosenbaum Financial Services in Albany for decades. In approximately 2001, Rosenbaum formed a limited liability company, Saratoga Cheese Company LLC, which he claimed would develop a halal and kosher cheese plant in the Capital Region, using local dairy products and a cheese coagulator that he had learned about when he was an exchange student in Germany decades earlier. In 2006, Rosenbaum reformed this entity as Saratoga Cheese Corporation, with the stated purpose of developing a cheese manufacturing facility in Cayuga County. Also according to prosecutors, between April 2006 and October 2012, Rosenbaum solicited over $1 million in private investments in Saratoga Cheese Corporation and its related entities by promising investors substantial returns and shares of stock in his corporations. Rosenbaum then used his various corporate entities as personal bank accounts, diverting over $600,000 to himself by writing checks payable to himself, transferring funds to other accounts, and making numerous cash withdrawals, including withdrawals in both the Albany area and in Costa Rica. NY

Tagged in: Financial and Investment Fraud, Securities Fraud,