New York (HedgeCo.net) – Staten Island resident, Anthony Coronati, an investment adviser to a fictitious hedge fund that he claimed would invest in equity securities, has been charged by the SEC with conducting several fraudulent securities offerings and siphoning some of the money raised from investors for a Caribbean vacation and plastic surgery.

When the money began drying up, he went on to defraud investors in additional schemes involving a New Jersey-based company Bidtoask LLC. Coronati and Bidtoask sold membership interests in the company for the purpose of investing in promising technology companies that had yet to hold initial public offerings (IPOs). However, Bidtoask did not even own the shares of other technology companies in which it was supposedly investing, and these companies were not actually in the process of an IPO.

Coronati and Bidtoask have agreed to settle the SEC’s charges. Coronati must pay back $400,000 in funds stolen from investors, and the money will be deposited into a Fair Fund for distribution to victims of the fraud schemes. Coronati also agreed to be permanently barred from the securities industry.

According to the SEC’s order instituting a settled administrative proceeding, Coronati conducted his schemes from at least 2009 to 2013. As the various schemes unraveled, he faced increasing concerns from investors. Coronati placated certain investors by making Ponzi-like payments to them using other investors’ money, and he sent a phony account statement to at least one investor purporting a position in the fake hedge fund that was worth more than $120,000. The account statement also purported that the fictitious hedge fund was more than 80 percent invested in well-known public companies such as Apple.

Alex Akesson
Editor for HedgeCo.net
alex@hedgeco.net
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