Ferraro is accused of using the Twitter account with the handle @computerbux, which had almost 10,000 followers in late 2019, in the scheme.
Soon after Costello failed to surrender Thursday, the FBI issued a “Wanted” poster featuring Costello, noting he was a fugitive.
“He may be traveling with his wife, Katrina Rosseini, who is not a fugitive,” said that poster, which included multiple photos of Costello, some of which included Rosseini.
The poster noted that the couple might be traveling with their small dog, named Harry.
On Tuesday night, Costello was arrested by an FBI SWAT team in El Cajon, California, in San Diego County, according to Emily Langlie, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington.
On Wednesday morning, Costello was taken to a hospital after complaining of health issues, Langlie said.
It is not yet known when he will make his first appearance in federal court in California.
The apprehension of Costello was welcome news to Steven Selna, an Oakland, California, lawyer whose client, CCSAC Inc., was one of the three cannabis companies allegedly swindled by Costello.
CCSAC has a pending lawsuit against Costello and his companies in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California over his failure, despite claims to the contrary, to pay $2.2 million in taxes to the state of California on CCSAC’s behalf from its account at Pacific Banking Corp.
Selna told CNBC that Costello was holding at least $2.9 million that belongs to CCSAC, which he said has a major presence in California through retail and distribution operations. The firm, which plans to expand to the East Coast in 2023, believes its monetary loss from Costello may be as high as $5 million.
The criminal indictment against Costello accuses him of fraudulently diverting $300,000 of CCSAC’s money deposited with Pacific Banking to purchase shares in a publicly traded shell company in 2019 for the purposes of ultimately completing a reverse merger with Costello’s then privately held company, GRN Holding Corp.
GRN’s shares became publicly traded as a result of that merger.
GRN Holding’s most recent SEC filing says Costello resigned as CEO of the company in April, the same month that he sold 144 million shares of GRN Holding to its current CEO for $140,000.
The indictment also says that at various times during Costello’s alleged schemes, he described another company he ran, GRN Funds LLC, as having more than $1 billion under management, and $600 million under deposit.
That claim was not true, the complaint says.
According to the indictment, a judge in the civil case filed against Costello by CCSAC last month ordered him to declare under the penalty of perjury the name of the financial institution and other details about the account where the balance of CCSAC’s funds was being held.
Costello submitted a sworn declaration saying that at least $2.9 million in CCSAC’s funds were being held in a credit union in Tacoma, Washington, in the name of GRN Funds LLC, the indictment notes.
But contrary to that claim, the GRN Funds checking account at the credit union “has a balance of $15.35 as of September 9, 2022,” the indictment said.
“All we’re interested in is getting our client’s money back,” said Selna, CCSAC’s attorney. “If it facilitates that it’s a good thing,” he said, referring to Costello’s arrest.
Selna also said that Costello, in dealings with CCSAC, “certainly presented himself as being highly successful in this industry, and that he would protect our client’s money. And that wasn’t true.”
The indictment says that when Costello solicited funds from investors, he made false claims that included saying he graduated from the University of Minnesota and had a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard.
He also claimed to have served two tours in Iraq as a member of the special forces and been shot twice, leaving shrapnel in his leg, the complaint says.
Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/05/man-claimed-to-be-billionaire-harvard-mba-iraq-vet-in-financial-fraud.html