New York Man Charged in $365K Fitness Scam
A former college staffer convicted of stealing funds from the school at which he worked attempted to repay it by getting investors to fund a fictitious online fitness magazine. Mark Andrew Moore attracted investors from at least six different states in order to collect three hundred sixty-five dollars for what he said was an online personal fitness forum. In fact, Moore only built a skeleton of the site, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.
Moore, age forty, was being held on a bail of one hundred fifty thousand dollars after having pleaded not guilty on Thursday to charges of grand larceny and tax fraud. Stephen McCarthy, his defense lawyer, said that Moore and his family were “looking forward to receiving justice.”
Moore duped at least fifty different investors into providing him with funds, most of whom he met through an investment club, prosecutors said. One victim from Massachusetts provided him with over seventy-five thousand dollars. The average investment was around five thousand dollars.
He reportedly spent close to a hundred thousand dollars on bar and restaurant tabs, several thousand on a Louis Vuitton bag, other luxuries, and of course the fifteen thousand dollars he owed in restitution from his 2000 conviction for stealing from Hunter College.
Moore sent his victims a bogus stock certificate and held conference calls about his phony business venture, which he called eS-prit International Inc., saying that it would be developed into an online magazine and social networking site. The site was ostensibly supposed to allow visitors to communicate with health and fitness experts said Hope Korenstein, assistant district attorney.
Moore currently faces up to fifteen years in prison if convicted.
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