South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)

Fraudster blew $1.3M of investors’ money, feds say

- BY WAYNE K. ROUSTAN

PARKLAND — He promised his retiree investors triple or quadruple their money back — but instead he went on a million-dollar spending spree with their cash, federal prosecutor­s said.

Isaac Grossman, 37, of Parkland, was arrested Friday and is facing fraud and money-laundering charges for spending an estimated $1.3 million on jewelry, luxury cars, and gambling, U.S. Attorney Ariana Fajardo Orshan announced in Miami.

According to the indictment, Grossman raised about $2.4 million between September 2014 and April 2018 for Dragon-Click Corporatio­n. As president of the company, Grossman solicited investment­s from dozens of mostly elderly retirees across the country.

He told potential investors that Dragon-Click was developing an app that would revolution­ize internet shopping.

Grossman claimed the app would allow a customer to upload a picture of any item they wanted to buy, find every retailer offering that item for sale, provide price comparison­s and then link to retailers’ websites where the customer could purchase the item.

Grossman told potential investors they would double, triple, or quadruple their investment­s, and that Dragon-Click was on the verge of being sold to a larger technology company, such as Google, Apple or Amazon, for over $1 billion, prosecutor­s said.

He also told investors that their investment money would be used to complete the technologi­cal developmen­t of the DragonClic­k internet applicatio­n, to pay legal fees related to the patent applicatio­n process and to close the sale of the applicatio­n to a large technology company, investigat­ors said.

Instead, Grossman spent at least $1.3 million of investors’ money on gambling, diamond jewelry, luxury cars, tuition payments for his children’s private education, and other personal expenditur­es, the indictment stated.

Among other transactio­ns, Grossman spent $35,000 on a 4.81 carat diamond ring, $21,200 for a lease on a McLaren MP4-12C, $36,500 to buy a Chevrolet Corvette, and $34,500 to partially pay off his mortgage.

The indictment also alleges Grossman failed to tell investors he had been permanentl­y barred by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority from acting as a broker-dealer, among other things, and that he had been ordered to pay nearly $122,000 in restitutio­n.

If convicted of conspiracy, wire fraud, and mail fraud, Grossman faces a maximum sentence of up to 20 years for each charge and up to 10 years in prison for each money-laundering charge.

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