Cosmo, Called Flight Risk in Ponzi Case, May Get Bail

Cosmo, Called Flight Risk in Ponzi Case, May Get Bail - 1/29/2009

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HEADLINES \| SETTLEMENTS AND DISMISSALS \| COURT FILINGS LINKS TO OTHER NEWS \| NEWS ARCHIVE	HEADLINES ARCHIVED SETTLEMENTS AND DISMISSALS ARCHIVED

HEADLINE NEWS:

Cosmo, Called Flight Risk in Ponzi Case, May Get Bail
Sean Gardiner and Patricia Hurtado

Bloomberg. January 29, 2009
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EXCERPT: Nicholas Cosmo, labeled by prosecutors as a “flight risk” and an “economic danger to the community,” may be freed on bail, a federal judge ruled, rejecting a government request that he be held in custody. Prosecutors allege that Cosmo, 37, owner of Agape World Inc. and Agape Merchant Advance LLC on New York’s Long Island, swindled at least 1,500 investors during a five-year, $370 million Ponzi scheme. He allegedly used some of the money to pay for limousines, fund a children’s baseball league and pay off a restitution order to victims of an earlier fraud, prosecutors said. U.S. Magistrate E. Thomas Boyle today said Cosmo may be freed on bail in an amount to be worked out between U.S. prosecutors and his lawyers. “The government has failed to make a showing by clear and convincing evidence that this defendant is a danger to the community,” Boyle said today at a hearing in federal court in Central Islip, New York. Federal prosecutors in the office of U.S. Attorney Benton J. Campbell in Brooklyn argued Cosmo should be held without bail citing a previous mail fraud conviction and arguing they’d only been able to locate a “small fraction,” just $746,000, of investor’s money had been found in bank accounts last week. “The government believes that he is not only a risk of flight but an economic danger to the community because of his prior conviction,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Grace Cucchissi told Magistrate Boyle at a brief hearing on Jan 27. “The government requests that a permanent order of detention be issued,” she wrote in a letter to the judge. […] “Taken all together, these calculations reduce the government’s claim of losses from approximately $370 million” to “about $51 million,” which they calculated from loans or funds that firms paid investors, his lawyers said.

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