Alexander Efrosman fled the US with a fake Russian passport in 2005, extradited from Poland 7 years later
A stunning Reuters report uncovers the massive scale of a forex fraud scheme that includes several years of international chasing and ends with a prison sentence lasting 188 months (15 years and 8 months) and an obligation to pay $4 million in restitution. The story is worthy of a plot for a Hollywood movie and Mr. Efrosman could indeed go down that road to try and recover at least some funds for his investors.
It is never too late for retribution, as it is never too late to get caught. Efrosman should have considered a country without an extradition treaty with the US when he took off with $5 million collected from investors between 2004 and 2005. While he claimed that he will invest the funds on the stock and forex markets he instead went to a casino hotel in Connecticut where he spent more than $3 million and proceeded to flee the country as Fortuna was not on his side.
He obtained a fake Russian passport (not a difficult task at the time as Russian documents were famous for being very easy to counterfeit) and assumed the name Michail Grosman and went on to travel to Mexico, Panama and Poland. However back in August 2011 he got detained in Krakow and was successfully extradited back to the US.
Mr Efrosman’s troubles have started all the way back in 1998 when the CFTC has charged him with mail and wire fraud and a court ruling in 2000 has mandated him to pay $3.7 million in civil monetary penalties banning him from further violating the provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act. So much for that Mr Efrosman, maybe you should have tried to hide out in Russia – it has become somewhat of a popular destination in 2013.
For the full report by Reuters visit their website.
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