#investor-fraud

#investor-fraud

A London, Ont., business owner Ammar Abdelhadi says he and his business partner are out more than $600,000 after they put money in construction renovation contracts with Majde Fanous, who, at the time, was a vice president of operations at Signet Group. Abdelhadi alleges Fanous used his position at the company and documents tied to construction projects to convince him and others to invest their money, promising they would receive both their initial investment and profits in return. "So far, we haven't got any of the principal or the profit that we were promised back. And then as he accumulated all the money, he just disappeared," Abdelhadi said.

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has asked Donald Trump to commute her sentence after she was convicted of defrauding investors in her now-defunct blood-testing startup that was once valued at $9bn, a notice on the US Department of Justice website showed. The justice department's office of the pardon attorney lists the status of her commutation request, which was made last year, as pending. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A prominent Orange County philanthropist and well-connected jeweler is now accused of bilking wealthy investors out of millions of dollars and then fleeing the country, according to a series of civil lawsuits filed over the past few months in both state and federal court. Moti Ferder, the co-founder and until recently CEO of Newport Beach-based Lugano Diamonds, is alleged to have defrauded more than 40 creditors out of hundreds of millions of dollars, according to more than a half-dozen lawsuits filed by multiple investors.