3 Charged in Claimed $15M Fraud; Investors Thought They Were Funding Litigation, Feds Say
Three individuals are facing federal charges in Brooklyn, N.Y., after allegedly bilking investors of $15 million in several different litigation funding-related schemes they are accused of operating between December 2008 and April of this year.
Peter Liounis, Ruslan Rapoport and Roman Tsimerman are accused of seeking funds in 2009 for the Rockford Group, which they represented as a private equity firm investing in litigation. However, instead of putting any of the $11 million they got into litigation investments, authorities say, they wired it all to overseas banks, Reuters reports.
Another alleged scheme involved an entity the defendants called Grayson Hewitt, the article says.
Liounis is charged with wire fraud and in custody. Rapoport is charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. Tsimerman is charged with money laundering and in custody.
There is no comment in the article from the jailed defendants or their counsel, but Rapoport’s lawyer said his client appears to be innocent.
