Two Canadians accused of scamming more than US$140 million from investors worldwide in a penny stock fraud have been arrested in Thailand, police said yesterday.
Gregory Curry, 63-year-old native of Sydney, Canada, was arrested on Tuesday at his ex-wife’s house in Kabin Buri District in the eastern province of Prachin Buri, Lieutenant Colonel Kanaphat Phahumunto said.
“Curry has been living in Thailand for 14 years. His Thai wife told police he paid her 20,000 baht [US$630] to find a place for him to hide and we found him on Tuesday morning at his ex-wife’s residence,” Kanaphat said.
Prachin Buri is 90km east of Bangkok.
MASTERMIND
He said the suspected mastermind of the scheme, 55-year-old Sandy Winick, was apprehended by Thai Special Branch police on Saturday.
They are among nine men the FBI suspects of augmenting the share price of worthless stocks of small companies and unloading them to unsuspecting investors from about 35 countries. Seven of them were arrested in the US and Canada on Tuesday last week, the FBI said.
NO HIDING PLACE
“[Winick and Curry] thought that they could simply run away from their crimes. Today, with the help of our friends in Thai law enforcement, we once again showed that fraudsters cannot hide from the law,” US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Loretta Lynch in a statement issued by her office on Tuesday.
In the same statement, the FBI called the scam “one of the largest international penny stock frauds and advance fee schemes in the history.”
Kanaphat said Winick were arrested in 2011 in Bangkok for a call center scam, but escaped bail.
Both men face extradition to the US on an indictment in a New York court.
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