Score another successful fraud discovery for Barry Minkow
The preacher-man has done it again. Another scam – BUSTED.
Wilson James Baston Jr. of Manhattan was arrested last week on charges related to bilking elderly people out of $16 million. And it all began with a report authored by Barry Minkow.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan alleges that Baston was operating a Ponzi scheme, promising victims investment returns up to 30%. He supposedly achieved those results by purchasing and rehabbing distressed real estate on Long Island and in Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan.
The few victims who received any money back from Baston got their money from later investors in Baston’s scheme. According to the newspaper:
Helping to unravel the alleged scheme was “particularly satisfying,” Minkow said, because many of the victims were elderly and mortgaged their own homes to invest in it.
One victim of Baston invested $228,000 that she hoped to eventually donate to a charity that provided medical care for children with cancer.
If convicted on the charges of wire fraud and mail fraud, Baston could get up to 10 years in prison.
