Two more years in prison for con man Eliyahu Weinstein

TRENTON – The time convicted Ponzi schemer Eliyahu Weinstein of Lakewood must spend in federal prison grew to 24 years on Monday, when a federal judge tacked on an additional two years' time for additional real-estate scams and defrauding investors in Facebook's initial public stock offering.

Weinstein, 39, was already serving 22 years in federal prison for running a real-estate investment scheme that defrauded investors out of $200 million dollars.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Joel A. Pisano sentenced Weinstein to 11 years and three months in prison for participating in additional real-estate scams, laundering the proceeds and orchestrating a fraud involving Facebook's initial public offering.

Of the sentence Pisano imposed on Monday, he ordered that all but two years be served concurrently with the 22-year term Weinstein was sentenced to on Feb. 25 for the $200 million Ponzi scheme. That brings the total time Weinstein must serve in federal prison to 24 years.

Pisano on Monday also ordered Weinstein to repay or forfeit the proceeds of the latest crimes, amounting to a total of $6.2 million.

Weinstein pleaded guilty to the new charges — conspiring to commit wire fraud, committing wire fraud while on pretrial release and money laundering — during a hearing before Pisano in Trenton on Sept. 3.

According to court documents in the latest case against Weinstein, he and his conspirators offered a pair of investors the opportunity to purchase blocks of Facebook shares prior to the social media company's initial public offering in May 2012, despite the fact that they had no access to the shares.

Weinstein and his conspirators falsely claimed they had buyers lined up to whom they would sell the Facebook shares at a substantial profit and that they had collateral to secure the investments, even though that collateral was worthless, according to a federal indictment handed up on April 17.

The victims wired a total of nearly $4.7 million to accounts controlled by Weinstein and his co-conspirators in February and March 2012 for blocks of Facebook shares, but the money was never used to purchase the stock, the indictment said.

Weinstein also was charged in the indictment with persuading the Facebook investors to invest in an apartment complex in Florida at a discounted price by telling them the property would be flipped immediately at a substantial profit. The victims wired a total of $2.8 million to an attorney trust account that was supposed to be held in escrow to purchase the property, but Weinstein and a conspirator wired out most of the money soon afterward. They gave about $1.8 million of it back to the Facebook investors, falsely claiming it represented the return of their principal and a profit on the Facebook transaction, according to the indictment.

A third component of the fraud involved misrepresentations to induce investment of about $1.5 million in notes on seven South Florida condominiums that Weinstein claimed were in foreclosure, although he had lost the units in a foreclosure years earlier, according to the indictment. To further the scheme, he provided the investment group with phony documents that falsely claimed the condominiums earned about $780,000 a year in rental income, the indictment said.

Throughout the scheme, Weinstein was on pretrial release in the earlier Ponzi scheme and was prohibited from engaging in any monetary transactions for more than $1,000 without the approval of a court-appointed counsel, authorities said. In the previous scheme, authorities said Weinstein used bogus deeds and mortgages and exploited the trust of the Orthodox Jewish community to bilk investors, authorities said

Two of Weinstein's conspirators in the latest case, Alex Schleider, 49, of Lakewood. and Aaron Glucksman, 41, of Brooklyn, previously pleaded guilty to charges relating to the scheme. Pisano on Dec. 8 sentenced Schleider to four years and four months in prison and three years on supervised released and ordered him to pay $613,200 in restitution and forfeit another $363,200 in criminal proceeds. Pisano sentenced Glucksman on May 5 to four years and four months in prison and three years on supervised release and ordered him to forfeit $1.2 million.

Charges against a third conspirator, Aaron Muschel, 64, of Brooklyn, N.Y. are pending.

Kathleen Hopkins: (732)643-4202; Khopkins@app.com