Share this
Twitter
Myspace
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Slashdot
Furl
Yahoo
Technorati
Newsvine
Facebook
Export PDF
Print
E-mail
Tags
Article Index
He and Canadian partner allegedly promised clients millions in return
An alleged con artist from Burlington County and his Canadian partner have been indicted on charges they posed as investment bankers and financial advisors to steal more than $500,000 from clients who were promised millions of dollars in venture capital, state Attorney General Paula T. Dow announced Friday.
The state Division of Criminal Justice Financial and Computer Crimes Bureau obtained a grand jury indictment charging Albert A. Paramito Jr., 39, of Marlton, his company Paramito Global Holding Inc., a Nevada corporation with an address in Voorhees, and Priti Ramjee of Toronto, with conspiracy, theft by deception and money laundering, all in the second degree. Paramito and Ramjee are also charged with second-degree misconduct by a corporate official.
It is alleged that between October 2006 and September 2008, Paramito and Ramjee demanded advance fees from six clients, ranging from $40,000 to $284,000, fraudulently claiming that they would arrange for millions of dollars in financing for the clients’ projects. They allegedly stole approximately $534,000 in fees, while never arranging any financing.
“Paramito and Ramjee portrayed themselves as high-powered financiers who could raise millions of dollars in venture capital, but we allege that, in reality, they are nothing but slick con artists,” Dow said. “If convicted, they could face up to 10 years in prison.”“Beginning with a complaint from a businessman who had been defrauded, our detective and prosecutor diligently pursued the trail of stolen money and broken promises that these defendants are charged with leaving in their wake,” state Criminal Justice Director Stephen J. Taylor said. “We are aggressively targeting financial fraud.”
The clients and their projects were spread across the U.S. and included a Canadian venture. A man who ran a broadband communications company paid Paramito and Ramjee $284,000 in advance fees after they promised to secure $27.8 million in funding for his company. Two other clients ran film production companies in Los Angeles. They each paid $50,000 in advance fees in the expectation that Paramito and Ramjee would raise millions of dollars for each company to produce a film. Ramjee told one of the film clients she could raise $30 million.
In similar fashion, Parmito and Ramjee obtained $50,000 from a man who wanted to raise $20 million for a wind energy project in Canada, $60,000 from a man who wanted to raise millions of dollars to build a causeway across a lake in Utah for a toll road, and $40,000 from a man who wanted to buy a defunct hospital in Kansas to develop as an assisted living facility.
In some instances, Paramito and Ramjee represented that they would become partners in the ventures and executed agreements with the clients regarding profit sharing and other terms.
None of the victims received any financing. Several demanded reimbursement of their fees, but Paramito and Ramjee allegedly refused to return the money. They allegedly laundered the stolen funds through personal and corporate bank accounts in New Jersey and Canada.
