Category: Banking

Regulatory Watch News

• 

  Head of Commercial Real Estate Investment Firm Sentenced to 87 Months for $62.8M Investment Fraud Scheme

  US Department of Justice

  May 20, 2025

  A New York man was sentenced yesterday in the Northern District of Georgia to 87 months in prison and ordered to pay over $45 million in restitution for his role in a scheme to defraud investors in connection with commercial real estate investments in Atlanta, Georgia and Miami, Florida.

  According to court documents, beginning in May 2022, Elchonon “Elie” Schwartz, 46, of New York City, engaged in a scheme to defraud commercial real estate investors that invested through the crowdfunding investment website, CrowdStreet Marketplace.

• 

  Surrey bookkeeper cooked the books and underreported almost $1 million in GST/HST

  FINTRAC

  May 20, 2025

  The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) announced that Aeddy Leung of Surrey, British Columbia, received a conditional sentence order for two years less a day and two years probation on April 15, 2025, at the Provincial Court of British Columbia (Robson Square). Leung pleaded guilty to willfully evading remittance tax and to making false statements in Goods and Services Tax (GST)/Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) returns.

• 

  People smuggler who organised Mediterranean crossings on ‘death trap’ boats threatened to throw migrants in the sea

  National Crime Agency

  May 20, 2025

  A man arrested by the National Crime Agency for masterminding the smuggling of thousands of people across the Mediterranean from north Africa into Europe has been jailed for 25 years. 42-year-old Egyptian national Ahmed Ramadan Mohamad Ebid was detained in Hounslow, west London, in June 2023. Working with law enforcement partners in Italy, the NCA were able to link him to a number of illegal crossings from Libya.