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PRESS RELEASE
Office of the United States Attorney
Middle District of Florida
PAUL I. PEREZ
UNITED STATES ATTORNEY
400 North Tampa Street
Suite 3200
Tampa, Florida 33602
813/274-6000
813/274-6300 (Fax)
300 North Hogan Street
Suite 700
Jacksonville, Florida 32201
904/301-6300
904/301-6310 (Fax)
501 West Church Street
Suite 300
Orlando, Florida 32805
407/648-7500
407/648-7643 (Fax)
Tampa, FL – LAWFUEL – The Law News Network – United States Attorney Paul I. Perez announced that Dean A. Sinibaldi of Ft. Myers, Florida was sentenced late Friday afternoon, August 12, 2005, in federal court in Tampa for his role in two conspiracies involving securities and mail fraud, the sale of unregistered securities, and money laundering. SINIBALDI was sentenced to a prison term of fourteen years, to be followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay restitution of $5,333,374 to victims of the fraud. During the sentencing hearing, the court also adopted an order of forfeiture of $2 million entered previously by the Court against the defendant.
On April 21, 2005, a federal jury in Tampa found SINIBALDI, Joseph Cuciniello of
Oldsmar, Florida, and Gene A. Tyrell of Glendale, Arizona, guilty of one count of
conspiracy to commit securities and mail fraud and to sell unregistered securities, and one count of conspiracy to engage in money laundering, as well as other related substantive charges.
In addition to the two convictions for conspiracy, SINIBALDI was also convicted of 2 counts of securities fraud, 3 counts of sale of unregistered securities, 4 counts of mail fraud, and 15 counts of money laundering. He was acquitted of 9 other counts.
The conviction for conspiracy to commit securities and mail fraud and to sell
unregistered securities carries a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment, a fine of $250,000 or of twice the gross gain or loss resulting from the scheme, and a term of
supervised release of three years. The conviction for conspiracy to engage in money
laundering carries a maximum sentence of twenty years’ imprisonment, a fine of $250,000 or an amount not more than twice the amount of the criminally-derived property involved in the transaction, and a term of supervised release of three years.
According to the Superseding Indictment, which was returned by a federal grand jury
on December 12, 2002, the defendants participated in an $18.4 million Ponzi scheme from late 1996 through August 2000, utilizing a succession of unregistered securities offerings to defraud hundreds of investors out of significant savings. The entities through which the defendants conducted their scam included Millennium Investment Inc. Trust and Millennium Investment Inc., the Stonehedge Group, Inc. entities, First Dominion Venture Capital, Inc., First Dominion Venture Capital, Global Research International, Inc., Impact Marketing, Inc., West Coast Distributors, Inc., Innovative Financial Concepts, LLC, Investor Business Journal, Inc., Delta Financial Services, Inc., Envision International, Inc., and The I.R. Firm, Inc.
Today’s sentencing of SINIBALDI is the latest development in a lengthy multiagency
investigation conducted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Securities Fraud Task
Force, a federal and state task force comprised of inspectors and agents with the U.S.
Postal Inspection Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other federal
agencies, as well as Financial Investigators and Analysts with the State of Florida Office of Financial Regulation, Bureau of Investigations. The task force, based in the Middle District of Florida, has been investigating and prosecuting large-scale securities fraud for approximately nine years. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Jay G. Trezevant and Rachelle DesVaux Bedke.
