‘Baseball Picks’ Scammer Jailed After 15 Years on the Lam
A Florida fraudster who ran sham handicapper websites before going on the feed for 15 years has been sentenced to 48 months inward prison house past a federal territory jurist inwards Dame Rebecca West Palm Beach.
One-time Boca Raton occupant Randy Craig Levine, 54, was arrested inwards Oesterreich inward June 2020 after existence identified past seventh cranial nerve acknowledgment engineering while trying to undecided a bank building answer for under a off-key name. At the time, he was the dependent of an Interpol Red River Notice. He was extradited to the US in Oct 2020.
Fifteen years earlier, Levine had been the proprietor of baseballpicks.net, nflfootballpicks.tv and babasket-ballpicks.net websites. Here, he sold sports betting tips, and to registered customers the chance to invest inward his purported gambling expertise.
He claimed he would habituate investors’ monetary resource to opened offshore or Las Vegas casino play accounts and win big, but according to prosecutors he simply kept the money for himself.
The trine tout sites were registered and paid for past a case company. Levine used aliases and fake accents patch speaking to victims on the phone and sometimes played a casino trading floor transcription to urinate it auditory sensation as if he were calling from a casino. He has been ordered to compensate $600,000 inwards restitution to his victims.
Man of Mystery
In 2004, Levine was investigated by the FBI investigation for mail fraud and wire fraud, and his passport was confiscated. But he obtained a young passport by prevarication on his coating and quickly fled the US.
In 2008, Levine was arrested inward Republic of Poland but disappeared before he could follow extradited to America.
He resurfaced a decade later inwards Guatemala when he was arrested at La Aurora International Airport on suspiciousness of money laundering and operating a passport-forging scam.
Because of the on the face of it true(a) Russian passport he was carrying, Guatemalan authorities believed he was a Russian subject named “Viktor Lapin.” However, his fingerprints matched those of a Guatemalan citizen named “Andre Santiago de Cuba Santos Galindo.”
Despite his arrest making the TV news inward the Central American country, Levine was later released from custody and quickly disappeared.
When he was eventually detained in Republic of Austria II years later, he was carrying a Bulgarian passport that used the a.k.a. “Alexander Koslov.”
$5 Million Bitcoin Scam
In Sept 2020 he was supercharged with orchestrating a $5 meg bitcoin scam with the assist of a disbarred FL lawyer, Prince Philip Reichenthal.
According to prosecutors, investors were invited past Reichenthal to conducting wire money to monetary fund the purchase of bitcoin, but no more such purchase took place. Instead, the money was allegedly funneled to overseas camber accounts controlled by Levine under his legion(p) aliases, including single business relationship inwards Guatemala.
On May 17, 2021, Levine pleaded guilty to a federal wire fraud level relating to his fraudulent handicapping websites and bearing false witness charges for his fraudulent passport application.
He is awaiting tribulation on several counts of commodities put-on and conducting wire humbug for the alleged bitcoin scam.
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