previously admitted to the court that among those she defrauded were close friends in her community, a close friend from childhood and another from law school, a childcare provider for her children, an elderly Alzheimer's patient, her step-brother, and three firefighters in the same city where her now ex-husband is employed as a firefighter.

As part of the scheme, Brady told investors that her company had secured contracts to perform large scale rehabilitation projects on foreclosed properties in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. She represented to a total of thirty-one investors that payments ranging from approximately $20,000 to $80,000 were needed to pay subcontractors to perform the work. In exchange for their investment, they were promised a return of fifty percent of the profit realized on the project they invested in. Many investors realized little or no return on their investment. Some investors invested in multiple projects.

In reality, MNB was hired by banks to perform menial tasks such as mowing grass, changing locks, winterizing properties, boiler or electrical inspections, and snow removal. The majority of projects secured by MNB were for less than $1,000. Many were for as little as $25 to a few hundred dollars.

To make potential investors believe she had secured contracts for large scale rehabilitation projects, Brady provided fraudulent emails purporting to be from a national property rehabilitation company claiming Brady had been approved to rehabilitate a property. Brady included in the emails fraudulent itemizations of work to be performed. Brady also included, without permission, the identity of an actual employee of the national property rehabilitation company in an attempt to make the emails appear authentic.

By the time the scheme ended after its discovery in the summer of 2018, twenty-three individuals had lost approximately $4.8 million to Brady. An investigation by Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation revealed that of the 171 properties for which Brady solicited and received funds from investors, 98 were for properties her company was never hired to preserve, on which no work was performed.

. . .

Brady also admitted to attempting to obstruct an Internal Revenue Service criminal investigation when, after being told by IRS criminal investigators she was under investigation, she asked investors to delete or destroy all email correspondence, texts, and documents relating to their investments in MNB rehabilitation projects.

According to court documents, after Brady became aware of the investigation, she and her paramour, a Rhode Island attorney, secured a meeting with the Rhode Island Department of the Attorney General and the Rhode Island State Police, requesting they investigate the victims of this case for usury.

As the case proceeded toward federal indictment, Brady purchased a one way ticket to Vietnam. Once the FBI discovered Ms. Brady's intention to leave the country, she moved her flight to an earlier departure date. Ms. Brady was arrested one day before her scheduled flight.

and others started a purported cryptocurrency "investment" fund (the "Fund") and recruited hundreds of individual investors into the Fund.  Under the terms of the Fund, investors were told that they would receive 50% of their trading profits, and that the founders of the Fund, including ACKERMAN, would receive the other 50%.  ACKERMAN falsely represented to potential investors that the fund had historical returns of approximately 15% each month.  Moreover, during the period alleged in the Complaint and Indictment, ACKERMAN prepared materials falsely purporting to show that the Fund was returning approximately 15% each month, and shared that information with Fund investors.  For example, in or about December 2019, ACKERMAN represented to investors and others that the Fund had a balance of over $315 million worth of cryptocurrencies available for trading in a Fund account.  Those representations by ACKERMAN included screenshots of trading data doctored by ACKERMAN in order to make it appear that the Fund was operating at that successful level, when its actual trading balance was less than the equivalent of half a million dollars.  ACKERMAN, moreover, regularly stole proceeds of this fraud from the Fund, and attempted to conceal those proceeds not only through his false representations to investors, but through the purchase of at least five pieces of real estate, all of which were titled to third parties.

[M]ichael W. Ackerman, along with two business partners, raised at least $33 million by claiming to investors that he had developed a proprietary algorithm that allowed him to generate extraordinary profits while trading in cryptocurrencies. According to the SEC's complaint, physicians in particular made investments in two entities Q3 Trading Club and Q3 I LP when they were introduced to the digital currency investment opportunity by one of the business partners who also was a physician. The SEC's complaint alleges that Ackerman misled investors about the performance of his digital currency trading, his use of investor funds, and the safety of investor funds in the Q3 trading account.  The complaint further alleges that Ackerman doctored computer screenshots taken of Q3's trading account to create the illusion that Q3 was highly invested in cryptocurrencies and was extraordinarily profitable, holding assets of as much as $310 million. In reality, as alleged, at no time did Q3's trading account hold more than $6 million and Ackerman was personally enriching himself by using $7.5 million of investor funds to purchase and renovate a house, purchase high end jewelry, multiple cars, and pay for personal security services.

[F]rom at least August 2017 through December 2019 defendants operated a fraudulent scheme in which they solicited funds to purportedly trade digital assets and then misappropriated those funds. The defendants engaged in numerous misrepresentations that included making claims of (i) earning customers .5% in daily trading profits and roughly 15% per month, (ii) using algorithms that generated winning trades 75% of the time, and (iii) utilizing security measures that made it impossible for any principal to transfer or withdraw customer funds.

In reality, the defendants sent only a small portion of the customers' funds to digital asset trading accounts, did not earn the trading profits they claimed, and misappropriated funds. To conceal the fraud, the defendants provided customers with false accounting statements, newsletters containing false trading returns, and fictitious screenshots reflecting the amount of money under Q3's management.

and three other executives engaged in a fraudulent scheme in which they falsely portrayed Outcome Health as an overwhelming success to investors, clients, and auditors.  As part of this scheme, Outcome Health allegedly overstated its revenue in its audited financial statements for 2015 and 2016 by millions of dollars while raising approximately $487 million from investors, who relied on the false financial statements and false representations about the company's growth. The amended complaint charges Desai and the three other Outcome Health executives with violating, as well as aiding and abetting the company's violations, of the antifraud provisions of Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 10(b) of the Securities Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder.

Ederaine and his co-conspirators were members of an organization that engaged in wire fraud, money laundering and related criminal activity. Ederaine acted as a money mule for the organization by opening numerous bank accounts using different fraudulent identities for the purpose of receiving, withdrawing and transferring proceeds of criminal activity. Specifically, between March 2016 and November 2017, Ederaine used counterfeit passports and other false identification documents to open approximately 23 fraudulent bank accounts at different banks in the Los Angeles area using six different false identities. Ederaine personally laundered between $1.5 million and $3.5 million in fraudulent funds between March 2016 and February 2018. 

In January 2018, Ederaine's co-conspirators gained access to email accounts belonging to a Massachusetts real estate attorney. Ederaine's co-conspirators sent emails to individuals in Massachusetts that "spoofed" the real estate attorney's account in an attempt to cause these individuals, who were purchasing real estate, to transfer $531,981 to the account of a woman who, in turn, sent $60,000 to an account controlled by Ederaine. Ederaine then withdrew approximately $9,000 in cash from the account. 

In a separate scheme from approximately 2017 through 2018, Ederaine made fraudulent purchases and engaged in fraudulent online transactions using the personally identifiable information (PII) and financial information of numerous students at a Santa Monica ELS Education Services, Inc. Ederaine, who worked at ELS, had access to the PII and financial information of the students, and used that access to make purchases of personal items.