Vincent Thakur Singh
May 30, 2014 | Business Crime
A man who carried out a US$20 million investment fraud largely in the ethnic Indian Fijian community pleaded guilty to wire fraud Thursday in federal court in Sacramento.
Vincent Thakur Singh, 45, formerly of Elk Grove, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and making false statements in bankruptcy.
Court papers say Singh ran Perfect Financial Group, a hard-money lender. Hard-money loans are low-leverage loans covered by collateral -- usually a title deed to a home with far more equity than the loan amount.
Instead of actually making those loans, he used about $12 million of investor money for gambling. He lived a lavish lifestyle and he invested nearly $1 million on a film project in Auckland New Zealand with Mainfreight fraudster Sushila Devi Mosese. He made currency withdrawals of $2 million. He also paid some old investors with new money.
Court papers say that when Singh declared bankruptcy in August 2010, he didn’t disclose 19 bank accounts he used in the investment fraud, which had 190 victims.
