For the third time since he pleaded guilty to wire fraud in the fall of 2015, Gregory Evan Goldstein of Stevenson Ranch has had his sentencing postponed.
Goldstein, now 44, was scheduled to be sentenced in October 2016, prior to that he was set to be sentenced in March 2016. His most recent sentencing date was set for Dec. 15, 2016.
Now, he’s “rescheduled” a third time to be sentenced later this month in Youngstown, Ohio, before Judge Benita Y. Pearson, Michael Tobin, spokesman for the US Department of Justice in Ohio, told The Signal Thursday.
In 2015, Goldstein was named by federal prosecutors in a wide-reaching penny-stock fraud scheme that cost investors $27 million. He was to be sentenced in early 2016 after he admitted in court to wire fraud as his part in the scam.
After entering his plea and then posting a $20,000 bond, Goldstein was released from custody with the promise to appear back in court for sentencing.
Sentencing for wire fraud could be as much as 20 years in prison.
U.S. Attorney Steven M. Dettelbach signed a 28-page criminal information document against Goldstein on Sept. 9, 2015, in Ohio.
“Although the charges allege a sophisticated ‘penny stock’ scheme, there was nothing small-scale about this,” Dettelback said in a news release on Cope’s arrest. “The defendants in this case, through trickery and manipulation, made millions and millions of dollars on the backs of innocent investors.”
In the criminal information he signed charging Goldstein, Dettelback states that from Sept. 21, 2007, to about April 3, 2014, Goldstein, with others, agreed to defraud investors and potential investors by issuing millions of shares to themselves at little or no cost and then artificially controlling the price and volume of traded shares.
Goldstein and the others did this, prosecutors said, by paying undisclosed commissions to brokers and former brokers for directing client funds to make both authorized and unauthorized investments.
Prosecutors identified Goldstein as a controlling member of Marquis Financial Services of Indiana, Inc., which had its principal place of business in Encino, court papers show.
Goldstein was also identified by prosecutors as the chief executive officer of Wall Street At Home.com, Inc., a New York corporation with its principal place of business also in Encino.
According to federal law, wire fraud is defined as “any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice.”
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