Las Vegas jury convicts two in multimillion-dollar fraud

A federal jury Monday convicted two men in a multimillion-dollar investment scheme hatched in Switzerland.

Anthony Brandel, 48, of Las Vegas, was found guilty of all 18 felony counts against him and James Warras, 69, of Wisconsin, was convicted of all 13 counts. The charges included conspiracy, wire fraud and securities fraud.

After a week-long trial the jury got the case about 1:30 p.m. and returned with a verdict at 5 p.m

Senior U.S. District Judge Kent Dawson set a March 2 sentencing date and ordered both men taken into federal custody from the courtroom.

Defense lawyers said afterward they would appeal the convictions.

Brandel and Warras, who has previous securities fraud convictions, were indicted with four others in Las Vegas in December 2013.

One of the other defendants pleaded guilty last month, another is in custody in Canada awaiting extradition and two others who live in Switzerland are still at large.

Prosecutors with the Justice Department's Fraud Section in Washington alleged investors were lured by promises of astronomical returns into contributing $100,000 to $1.2 million to a phony Swiss company, the Malom Group.

Securities & Exchange Commission court filings alleged the Malom Group, an acronym for "make a lot of money," bilked 30 investors out of more than $11 million between 2009 and 2011.

The victims in the criminal case investigated by the FBI lost more than $5 million, prosecutors said. The criminal conspiracy lasted until October 2013.

Brandel ran M.Y. Consultants, a Nevada company that promoted investment opportunities with the Malom Group, and Warras was an officer of the Swiss company.

The conspirators deceived investors with false bank statements that showed Malom Group had hundreds of millions of dollars in European banks, and then tried to cover up their misdeeds after the investors became wise to the scheme, prosecutors alleged.

"To this day not a single victim has received money from the defendants," Justice Department Trial Attorney Melissa Aoyagi told the jury in her closing argument Monday. "All they got were excuses and promises that the money would be refunded."

Aoyagi said prosecutors presented plenty of evidence at trial that showed both Brandel and Warras were intimately involved in the sophisticated international scheme.

Defense lawyers Brian Smith and Raquel Lazo argued their clients were scammed like everyone else by the two fugitive co-defendants — Martin Schlaepfer, Malom's chief executive, and Hans-Jurg Lips, the company's financial chief.

Smith, who described Brandel as a "minnow swimming in a shark tank," said his client believed the Malom Group was "100 percent legitimate" and was guilty only of being naive.

"Where's the smoking gun? Where's the piece of evidence the government holds up and says, 'Ah Ha, we got you?'" Smith asked.

Lazo added, "James Warras did not defraud anyone. Just like everyone else he believed that Malom was legitimate. He believed that everything was on the up-and-up."

Lead Justice Department prosecutor Brian Young, however, argued that prosecutors proved the two defendants were involved in every aspect of the scheme, each pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars for essentially doing nothing.

Contact Jeff German at jgerman@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-8135. Find him on Twitter: @JGermanRJ