Officials announced on Friday that an elderly man from Orange County had left homeless after being targeted in a fraud scheme costing him nearly two million dollars.
According to the Ministry of Justice, the 78 -year -old victim was defrauded by John Tamheir Maccabi, 42, from Kelwa, Hawaii, who made false promises to allow the sale of the victim’s yacht.
Maccabi admitted his federal crime on Thursday, confessing guilty on the charge of fraud on wires. He faces the maximum of 20 years in the federal prison.
The Ministry of Justice said that everything started with Maccabi’s offer to help the victim, whose identity was not disclosed to the public, to sell a yacht.
“What the victim did not know is that Maccabi used fabricated documents to change the yacht ownership to the name Macapi,” the Ministry of Justice made clear in a statement. “Once in his name, Maccabi converted returns to his personal bank account and used most revenues for his personal purposes.”
At the bottom of the line, Maccabi also pushed the victim to transport his home in Irvin, which is worth one million dollars to a LLC controlled company (LLC).
Without telling the victim, Maccabi made himself the only director of LLC, and according to the court documents, he caused the removal of loans worth one million dollars and secured it by the victim’s residence, and to drain all his rights.
Maccabi spent the returns and then failed to pay the loans. The victim’s house was sold in the sale of mortgage imprisonment, and the Ministry of Justice said, “The victim left homeless.”
Through this scheme, Maccabi defrauded the victim out of about $ 1814,000.
If you or anyone you know are 60 years old or older and are victims of financial fraud, the Ministry of Justice said that assistance is available in the National Fraud Hotline: 1-833-Fraud-11 (1-833-372-8311).