Boiler room fraud scheme leads to prison for owner of Florida real estate company

FLORIDA – A former owner of a Tampa area real estate company has been sentenced for money laundering in connection with his role in an international boiler room fraud scheme, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida (USAO) has announced.

Frank Sebastian Visicaro, 63, of Trinity, has been sentenced by U.S. District Judge Mary S. Scriven to 24 months in federal prison for conspiracy to commit money laundering. As part of his sentence, the court also ordered Visicaro to pay restitution in the amount of $1,088,440, the proceeds of funds laundered through bank accounts he controlled, said the USAO.

Visicaro pleaded guilty on December 9, 2021.

According to the plea agreement, Visicaro used his real estate company, two shell companies, and bank accounts in the names of the companies to launder the proceeds of an international boiler room fraud scheme, which reportedly defrauded foreign victims via the sale of worthless investments.

Reportedly, Visicaro used the companies and bank accounts to receive fraud proceeds. Some of the fraud proceeds were wired directly from victims overseas into these accounts, the USAO said. More often, the USAO said fraud proceeds from the victims were wired to United States-based accounts controlled by other conspirators and then later wired to accounts controlled by Visicaro.

In such instances, Visicaro’s accounts allegedly served as “buffer” accounts, that is, secondary bank accounts used to transfer and conceal foreign victims’ money and avoid detection by banks.

Prosecutors said more than $1 million in victims’ funds flowed into Visicaro-controlled accounts. Thereafter, reportedly at the direction of other conspirators, Visicaro wired most of the funds to multiple other financial institutions—held by, among others, boiler room sales agents or other conspirators—in order to promote the scheme and to conceal and disguise the source of, and to hinder any efforts to locate, those proceeds, the USAO said.

According to the USAO, Visicaro was compensated, via a percentage of the amount of funds he helped to launder, for his role in the conspiracy.

“We are committed to stopping transnational criminal organizations from targeting unsuspecting victims with fraudulent investment schemes that use high-pressure tactics,” said HSI Tampa Assistant Special Agent in Charge John Dumas.

“HSI Tampa and the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) are formidable investigative partners working together with our international partners to stop these fraudsters from taking peoples’ hard-earned money.”

“Illegal activity involving the investment industry has brought financial ruin to many people,” said IRS-CI Acting Special Agent in Charge Ronald A. Loecker.

“IRS Criminal Investigation is determined to attack these fraud schemes by utilizing our forensic accounting skills and working side by side with Homeland Security Investigations and put a stop to this and other types of financial crime.”

This case was investigated by the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation. It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Rachelle DesVaux Bedke and David W.A. Chee.