A 48-year-old Los Angeles man will plead guilty to operating a Ponzi scheme after defrauding elderly Filipino churchgoers in LA County out of almost $6 million, according to CBS News.
Authorities say Sylvein William Maximilian D’Habsburg XVII changed his name to Sylvein Scalleone to pose as a European aristocrat, The Times reports. He faces up to 20 years in federal prison for one count of wire fraud.
The scammer admitted in a plea deal that he ran a Ponzi scheme from January 2018 to June 2023. D’Habsburg hired recruiters to find investors for his companies, Wild Rabbit Technologies LLC and BAI Intelligence LLC, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. They singled out Filipino Americans in LA County, including senior parishioners.
As part of the scheme, prosecutors said that D’Habsburg claimed to have invented artificial intelligence that could predict the future and detect COVID-19 infections from just video recordings, the LA Times reported. He also claimed his companies were backed by celebrities like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
D’Habsburg told his investors he used the funding for patents and employment, but had actually spent it on luxury cars and rare antiques.
The FBI is investigating, while the Department of Justice prosecutes the case.
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