Insurance broker gets prison in fraud case
ALBANY, N.Y. >> A local insurance broker was sentenced Thursday to three to nine years in prison for soliciting more than $1 million from investors between 2006 and 2012 in a securities fraud scheme.
A state Supreme Court judge also signed off on more than $1 million in restitution judgments on behalf of victims of Lawrence D. Rosenbaum, 65, of Albany, who previously pleaded guilty to charges including grand larceny and securities fraud. Those victims include not only individual investors, but also the state Department of Taxation and Finance.
Rosenbaum owned and operated Rosenbaum Financial Services in Albany for decades and in 2001 formed a limited liability company, Saratoga Cheese Company LLC, which he claimed would develop a halal and kosher cheese plant in the Capital Region that would use local dairy products and a cheese coagulator he had learned about as an exchange student in Germany decades earlier. Rosenbaum reformed this company in 2006 as Saratoga Cheese Corp. and created several related businesses, including Saratoga Milk Corp., which he claimed would oversee the milk production for his cheese facility, and Saratoga Bio Gas Corp. and Bioenergies of the Americas, which he claimed would develop alternative energy uses for waste produced by cows in the cheese and milk facilities.
Between April 2006 and October 2012, Rosenbaum solicited more than $1 million in private in-
vestments in these companies by promising investors substantial returns and shares of stock in his corporations. Rosenbaum then used his corporate entities as personal bank accounts, diverting more than $600,000 to himself by writing checks payable to himself, transferring funds to other accounts and making numerous cash withdrawals. Some of the stolen money was used to travel to and from Costa Rica, where for years he paid for a $1,000-a-month apartment for a girlfriend, while none of the production or processing facilities for which Rosenbaum solicited funds were ever built.
Rosenbaum was initially charged in June 2016 on a 27-count indictment that included grand larceny, securities fraud and tax evasion charges and pleaded guilty Jan. 5 to felony counts of second-degree grand larceny, securities fraud and repeated failure to file personal income tax returns.
Rosenbaum also faces charges that he and his wife, Thomasine, also
65, fraudulently collected $12,500 in insurance money after their son, Andrew, 26, committed suicide May 8, 2016, by stepping in front of a tractor-trailer on Interstate 87 near Exit 2 in Colonie.