Pardon My Ponzi
Twice-convicted swindler Eliyahu Weinstein got a Trump commutation. Now he's going to back to prison for a third fraud.
“I don’t like repeat offenders; I like dead offenders.” - Ted Nugent
You’re supposed to spend your time in prison learning how to become a better criminal. Ponzi schemer Eliyahu Weinstein didn’t do his homework.
Weinstein had been serving a 24-year prison term for two brazen frauds when President Donald Trump commuted his sentence in 2021. Last week, a federal judge slapped Weinstein with 37 years for a yet another scam.
“He picked his Ponzi schemer’s playbook back up and allegedly started ripping off victims again,” said U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger, when he indicted Weinstein for his latest grift in February.
Read More: Unshackling Ponzi Perps (Business Blunders)
In 2011, Weinstein, 51, of Lakewood, N.J., was sentenced to 22 years in prison for running a $200 million real estate fraud.
In 2014, he was sentenced to another two years for two other schemes he committed while on pre-trial release for his real estate scam. He was convicted for conning his investors with a claim that he had access to cheap Facebook IPO stock and another bald-faced lie that he was buying an apartment complex in Florida.
Once out of prison, Weinstein started going by the name of “Mike Konig” to hide his criminal past.
Along with others, he started Optimus Investments Inc., and told investors their funds would be invested in COVID-19 masks, scarce supplies of baby formula and first-aid kits for war-ravaged Ukraine.
By February 2022, he could no longer make promised payments to investors. Go figure.
Ponzi schemers can’t help themselves.
Related Reading: Ponzi Once, Ponzi Twice (Business Blunders)
What else can you do when you’ve mastered the art of persuasion and have seven children to support, but Ponzi, Ponzi, Ponzi?
How persuasive was he? Somehow, Weinstein got the very Hasidic community that he ripped off to beg Trump for a break, according to Shtetl, Haredi Free Press.
The publication reported that Rabbi Nochum Dov Brayer wrote a letter to Trump in 2021 requesting for not just clemency but a pardon for Weinstein.
“He has displayed deep remorse and broken-heartedly vows never to repeat his past mistakes,” the rabbi wrote.
Weinstein also had sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s star attorney, Alan Dershowitz, to get behind his pardon-my-Ponzi campaign.
According to Shtetl, Haredi:
“Other Haredi leaders who petitioned for Weinstein’s release included Moshe Margaretten of the Tzedek Association, who is from the Skver Hasidic sect, and leading Haredi rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, who passed away in 2022. Others who petitioned for his release range from lawyer Alan Dershowitz to multiple current and former members of Congress.”
“In an email to Shtetl, Dershowitz said of Weinstein, “If he’s found guilty again, he will receive no mercy.” Dershowitz went on to describe his work for Weinstein’s pardon: “I had little or no contact with him personally,” Dershowitz wrote, adding, “I provided legal advice to a Jewish organization that advocated lower sentences for those who received long sentences like his.”
A lawyer who would defend Epstein would defend anyone.
Dershowitz was shrewed enough to consider that Weinstein might be “found guilty again.” Weinstein was after all a repeat offender. And Dershowitz, aHarvard law professor, used his considerable influence to let the Ponzi perp walk free.
In a 2016 deposition, Epstein victim Virginia Guiffre claimed under oath that Dershowitz had sex with her 16 times while being trafficked by Epstein. It’s an allegation that Dershowitz has vehemently denied.
“Professor Dershowitz was around a lot and there was always young girls around a lot,” Giuffre alleged in her sworn deposition.
Despite her gruesomely detailed claims, Guiffre settled lawsuits with Dershowitz in 2022. Then she recanted saying she “may have made a mistake” in identifying her abuser. Must have been some other rich, famous or powerful creep.
Dershowitz called the episode “a total frame up.”
The White House announced Weinstein’s commutation in January 2021 along with an amazing cast of other nefarious characters. Here’s what it said in a press release:
President Trump commuted the sentence of Eliyahu Weinstein. This commutation is supported by former U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman, former Representative Bob Barr, former U.S. Attorney Joseph Whittle, Professor Alan Dershowitz, Representative Mark Walker, Representative Scott Perry, Representative Jeff Van Drew, Jessica Jackson of the Reform Alliance, The Tzedek Association, Dr. Danny Feuer, and numerous victims who have written in support. Mr. Weinstein is the father of seven children and a loving husband. He is currently serving his eighth year of a 24-year sentence for a real estate investment fraud and has maintained an exemplary prison history. Upon his release, he will have strong support from his community and members of his faith.
Weinstein is hardly alone in facing charges for other crimes after getting a break from Trump. A president who would let a recidivist scam artist walk free, would free anybody.
According to a June tally by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington:
At least 10 January 6th insurrectionists pardoned by President Trump have already been rearrested, charged or sentenced for other crimes. The crimes include plotting murder of FBI agents, child sexual assault, possession of child sexual abuse material and reckless homicide while driving drunk – underscoring the public safety threats posed by the pardoned insurrectionists.
And there are others.
Also last week, Jonathan Braun, a convicted drug trafficker and loan shark who received clemency, was sent back to prison last week.
While out under the good graces of President Trump, he allegedly sexually assaulted a family nanny, swung an IV pole at a nurse, threatened a member of his synagogue and evaded bridge tolls.
Nice guy. Maybe he’ll catch another break.
Weinstein is part of a growing community of thieves and thugs who’ve blown their second and third chances.
A state securities regulator I met during my days at The Denver Post once told me how it happens: “Somehow, these guys always find each other.”
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How can people be so stupid? If you're lucky enough to get your sentence commuted, one would think you would stay on the straight and narrow. It's like they can't help themselves from scamming people.
I know how to make a million dollars. And if each of a million people sends me a dollar, I'll be happy to tell them how...