Adviser Who Sold Facebook Shares He Didn’t Own Faces Sentence Up To 45 Years
Remember when everyone wanted Facebook stock? When getting pre-IPO shares was a point of pride, when retail investors worried they weren’t big enough fish to rate allotments from their brokerages? That friends, was an opportunity, and there are some men who answer when opportunity knocks.
John Mattera, for instance, the Floridian charged last year with scheming to bilk investors for $12.6 million by promising them the chance to own pre-IPO shares of companies inlcuding Facebook and Groupon, was such a man. At the time of his ill deeds, Mr. Mattera was the chairman of the advisory board of something called Praetorian Global Fund, which offered investors the chance to buy into something called the “G Power Entities,” supposed special purpose vehicles which purported to own stock in the pre-IPO firms. Read More
