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Former Los Angeles investment banker pleads guilty to fraud

https://www.yahoo.com/news/former-los-angeles-investment-banker-pleads-guilty-fraud-234115684--sector.html

Former Los Angeles investment banker pleads guilty to fraud
January 19, 2017

By Nate Raymond

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former Los Angeles investment banker once dubbed
"Porn's New King" pleaded guilty on Thursday for the second time in a year
to engaging in securities fraud, admitting to participating in a scheme
that cheated investors and a Native American tribe.

Jason Galanis, 46, entered his plea in Manhattan federal court to charges
that included securities fraud and conspiracy to commit investment adviser
fraud in connection with what prosecutors called a multimillion-dollar
scheme.

Under a plea deal, Galanis, who is scheduled to be sentenced on May 5,
agreed to forfeit over $43 million and not appeal any prison term of about
19-1/2 years or less.

His sentence would be on top of whatever he receives as punishment in a
separate case, in which Galanis admitted in July to manipulating the market
for reinsurer Gerova Financial Group Ltd.

In that case, he agreed not to appeal a prison term of 12-1/2 years or less
and is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 16.

Galanis was dubbed "Porn's New King" by Forbes magazine in 2004 after
buying the nation's largest processor of credit card payments for internet
pornography.

Three years later, the SEC fined him $60,000 after alleging he prepared
false accounting information for Penthouse International Inc, in which he
held a large stake.

According to prosecutors, beginning in 2014, Galanis and his father, John,
persuaded the Wakpamni Lake Community Corp, an affiliate of the Oglala
Sioux Nation in South Dakota, to issue $60 million in municipal bonds.

Together with his father and five associates, Galanis and his co-defendants
then misappropriated the bond proceeds, prosecutors said. They said he
obtained $8.5 million for himself, which he spent on items such as his
home, jewelry and travel.

To buy the illiquid bonds, Galanis arranged for two co-defendants to use
about $40 million belonging to clients of investment advisers Hughes
Capital Management Inc and Atlantic Asset Management LLC, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said that as a result of the fraud, those investors were left
with worthless securities, while the tribal corporation was left with no
way to make interest payments due on the bonds.

The case is U.S. v. Galanis et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District
of New York, No. 16-cr-00371.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Peter Cooney)


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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