In the wake of an FBI operation seeking to expose Southern California con artists running Ponzi schemes, a federal grand jury has indicted a Los Angeles man who falsely guaranteed investment returns of as much as 15 percent with little or no risk.
According to the four-count indictment, Brian Charles Solomon–who claimed he was the managing director of Alpha Omega Funds LLC and senior managing partner of SolomonKeegan Group–unwittingly tried to lure wealthy Orange County residents into his hedge fund scam without realizing the individuals were undercover FBI agents.
Solomon used a series of props–including false account activity statements and deceitful boasts about his financial success–to convince investors that he'd safely invested their money when, in fact, he'd converted the funds into personal use to pay tuition at Le Lycee Francais de Los Angeles and his own rent, according to court records.
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Solomon has obtained a taxpayer-funded criminal defense lawyer and pleaded not guilty to the charges.
On April 5, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jean P. Rosenbluth granted a Department of Justice request to hold the defendant in custody without bail.
A jury trial has been tentatively scheduled inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Santa Ana on May 28.
Solomon, who was born in 1973, also has used the names Charles Solomon and Brian Dante Solomon, according to court records.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.
