Robert Lenard Booth Sentenced To Ten Years For Defrauding Investors Of Over $2 Million In International Boiler Room Scheme

 

Robert Lenard Booth Sentenced After Being Convicted by a Jury for Conspiracies to Commit Securities Fraud, Wire Fraud, and Money Laundering

 Damian Williams, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that ROBERT LENARD BOOTH, a/k/a “Trevor Nicholas,” was sentenced to ten years in prison for defrauding investors of almost $2 million and laundering the proceeds as part of an international boiler room scheme.  Back in April, a jury convicted BOOTH of conspiracies to commit securities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.  U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff imposed the sentence in Manhattan federal court.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said:  “For years, Robert Lenard Booth and his co-conspirators made fraud their business.  They used elaborate paperwork and strategies for emotional manipulation to defraud individual investors, often repeatedly targeting the same victims and sometimes extracting from them their life savings.  Today’s sentence holds him accountable and sends a message to those who engage in fraud that they will face consequences.”

According to previous filings in this case and the evidence presented at trial:

Previously a resident of Brooklyn, New York, BOOTH relocated overseas and spent years defrauding investors from Thailand and Panama.  From at least June 2019 through August 2021, BOOTH ran, and conspired with others to run, a boiler room operation that sold investors nearly $2 million in securities that they never received.  Targeting their victims repeatedly by phone, BOOTH and others pretended to be licensed brokers at real Manhattan brokerages, then used high-pressure tactics to pitch stocks at alleged discount prices.  They followed up by sending the victims false documents to confirm the alleged stock purchases and trades.

Over time, the fraudsters established personal rapport with the victims and directed the victims to wire money—sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars—to shell company accounts in New York, Hong Kong, and Singapore.  To make the payments, a number of victims spent down their savings and took out loans and mortgages.  To receive and launder the victims’ payments, BOOTH worked with other money launderers who established sham companies and then lied to banks to open U.S. bank accounts in the names of those companies.

In total, Booth’s boiler room defrauded at least 17 victims of $2,003,993.

On April 27, 2022, BOOTH, 68, was convicted of conspiracies to commit securities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering after a six-day jury trial before Judge Rakoff.  In addition to the prison sentence, BOOTH was sentenced to 3 years of supervised release. Orders have also been entered for $2,003,883 in restitution and $780,981.86 in forfeiture.

Mr. Williams praised the outstanding investigative work of the Special Agents of the United States Attorney’s Office, HSI, IRS-CI, and their partnership with the J5. The J5 works together to gather information, share intelligence and conduct coordinated operations against transnational financial crimes. The J5 includes the Australian Taxation Office, the Canadian Revenue Agency, the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs from the U.K. and IRS-CI from the U.S.