Loses $4m to a sham, mob-tied firm
IN EARLY 2007, a Wall Street trader waltzed inside a West Palm Beach, Fla., factory to see a futuristic product pitched as his fast track to making a faster mint.
Visitor Mark Spanakos surveyed a bustling operation with a professionallooking staff clad in pristine white lab coats, protective goggles and hardhats.
Here, as his host on the 15-minute tour explained, production was underway on a newly patented, high-tech, highly profitable fingerprint identification device.
The impressed Staten Islander couldn’t know what he alleges is the truth: There was no production, no product, no patent. He soon learned about the lies. Spanakos’ fibbing best friend had lured him into a scam. He would lose a $4 million investment in the sham company, Hawk Biometrics — described in court papers as a mobbed-up farce, a racketeering enterprise intent on fleecing its investors.
One of its principals, a reputed made member of the Colombo crime family, even threatened to whack Spanakos during a 2013 deposition.
“You are a f---ing dead man!” he reportedly screamed in front of a roomful of witnesses.
More than a decade after touring the fake Florida factory and despite his repeated pleas to law enforcement about Hawk, the duped Spanakos is still fighting in court and hoping for justice — if not compensation.
He’s not alone: The alleged duped investors in 13 states, along with an additional 14 New York commodities dealers, several NFL players and an assortment of hardworking mom-andpop types.
Their investments disappeared in a ripoff rife with “fraudulent financial reports, self-dealing, engaging in insider trading, manipulating stock prices and acting in material detriment of the company and its shareholders,” according to court papers.
Spanakos’ allegations were once deemed credible by a Palm Beach police detective, and he even carried a briefcase fitted with a recording device as the FBI investigated the case.
Yet somewhat inexplicably, no one was ever indicted, arrested or prosecuted. Why?
“That’s exactly the question everybody is asking: Where is the Securities and Exchange Commission, scam the FBI, the IRS?” said attorney Cathy Lerman, who represents a dozen of the victims.
“There’s something really, really wrong here. These guys were blatant and fearless.”
One-time Hawk director David Coriaty said the various probes only prove the operation was legitimate.
“Every law enforcement agency investigated this and not only cleared us but asked Spanakos why he went to them in the first place,” he said.
Incredibly, the allegedly crooked company is still operating — and trading on the Nasdaq. On Feb. 2, though worth less than a penny apiece, 105,000 Hawks shares moved.
lll Spanakos, now 58, was known as “Shark” on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange, where he befriended colleague “We were best friends, joined at the hip,” he recalled. “We rode motorcycles. We hung out with a lot of guys who worked together. It was a great life.”
And so when Sebastiano approached Spanakos with an offer to get an early piece of a new personal identification product, he listened. And then Spanakos invested. “It sounded like a great idea, especially after 9/11,” Spanakos recalled. “The device would read the constellation of blood vessels in your finger. You would need a match to start your car, open the door to your car, for ATMs and banking and credit cards.”
“The Power of Touch” became one of Hawk’s promotional tag lines. Spanakos became a true believer, investing his own cash — and even persuading his clerk to Edward (Seby) Sebastiano. invest $100,000.
His former Wall Street worker now drives a cab.
The powers behind Hawk, as identified in court papers and by Spanakos, included a scary coalition of opportunists, gangsters and thieves.
One hailed from New York City: Robert Pate, a former Colombo family soldier and Sebastiano’s brother-in-law.
His brother John Pate, identified by the FBI as a mob capo, reunited with Robert in Florida after finishing a 10-year federal prison stint in October 2003.
John Pate, was a made man, a combatant in the early 1990s Colombo family war that left a dozen people dead. He was also charged with the 1985 murder of boss Carmine Persico’s son-inlaw, who was left to decompose in a car trunk outside Nathan’s in Coney Island.
Hawk operated under the guidance of the muscular, tattooed David Coriaty, who boasted of a nonexistent college football career at the powerhouse University of Miami and a short, bogus pro stint with the Dolphins.
Like Robert Pate, he came with a brother: Ehab Coriaty, who was convicted in 1999 of one count of conspiracy and eight counts of wire fraud for bilking his boss of roughly $1 million in investment funds.
David Coriaty “seemed to be a cool guy,” recalled ex-NFL defensive back Bryant McFadden, an early Hawk investor. “I thought he was straightforward . . . . He seemed legit.”
No surprise there. The Hawk crew put together a flashy sales come-on for potential investors.
“Hawk Biometrics patents are unmatched in the industry to de-