Japanese Investment Company Executives Extradited on Charges Relating to $1.5 Billion Ponzi Scheme

[nitpicker]

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/japanese-investment-company-executives-extradited-charges-relating-15-billion-ponzi-scheme

Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, April 18, 2019

Japanese Investment Company Executives Extradited on Charges Relating to $1.5 Billion Ponzi Scheme

Japanese authorities have extradited to the United States two former executives of a Las Vegas, Nevada, investment company in connection with their alleged roles in a $1.5 billion Ponzi scheme.
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Junzo Suzuki, 70, and Paul Suzuki, 40, who are father and son and are both Japanese nationals, were each charged in a July 2015 indictment filed in the District of Nevada with eight counts of mail fraud and nine counts of wire fraud. Japanese authorities arrested the Suzukis in January 2019 at the request of the United States, and extradited them to the United States on April 17. The Suzukis will make their initial appearance this afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Cam Ferenbach of the District of Nevada.

According to the indictment, Junzo Suzuki previously was executive vice president for Asia Pacific of MRI International (MRI), an investment company which was headquartered in Las Vegas and had an office in Japan. Paul Suzuki previously was the company’s general manager for Japan operations, based in Tokyo. MRI purportedly specialized in “factoring,” whereby the company purchased accounts receivable from medical providers at a discount, and then attempted to recover the entire amount, or at least more than the discounted amount, from the debtor.

According to allegations in the indictment, from at least 2009 to 2013, the Suzukis and their co-defendant Edwin Fujinaga, 72, of Las Vegas, fraudulently solicited investments from thousands of Japanese residents. When MRI collapsed, it allegedly owed investors over $1.5 billion. Specifically, the indictment alleges that Fujinaga and the Suzukis promised investors a series of interest payments that would accrue over the life of the investment and that would be paid out along with the face value of the investment at the conclusion of the investments’ duration. The defendants allegedly solicited investments by, among other things, promising investors that their investments would be used only for the purchase of medical accounts receivable (MARS) and by representing that investors funds would be managed and safeguarded by an independent third-party escrow company.

The indictment further alleges that MRI operated as a Ponzi scheme, in which the defendants used new investors’ money to pay prior investors’ maturing investments. According to the indictment, the defendants also allegedly used investors’ funds for purposes other than the purchase of MARS, including paying themselves sales commissions, subsidizing gambling habits, funding personal travel by private jet and other personal expenses.