FaceBook Investor’s Get in The..Teeth by Two Guys

 

Two Broward County men surely won't brag about this on Facebook—or check in from jail.

Michael Corey Rodgers, of Plantation, and Jonathan Hirsch, of Fort Lauderdale, are accused of defrauding investors of more than $150,000 of private shares of Facebook before the highly anticipated initial public offering of stock. They operated out of a Fort Lauderdale office suite, authorities said.

Both were charged with organized scheme to defraud and grand theft.

Rodgers, 40, was also charged with securities fraud. He remained in jail Friday in lieu of $42,500 bail; Hirsch, 33, posted a $17,500 bond early Thursday.

The case was investigated by Fort Lauderdale police and the Florida Office of Financial Regulation.

 According to an arrest affidavit, the pair set up an office at 1451 West Cypress Creek Road in Fort Lauderdale where the scheme took place between November 2011 and May 2012.

Rodgers allegedly mailed stock purchase agreements and other correspondence to investors and made phone calls to them from the Fort Lauderdale office suite. However, investors did not receive a stock certificate or confirmation that they held shares.

Rodgers solicited investors to purchase stocks of Facebook by registering as president of QFC Consulting Inc. and telling investors that the private equity firm had access to pre-IPO shares of Facebook stock, the arrest affidavit said.

Investors were also offered shares of ARCIS Resources, a publicly traded company that specializes in petroleum product recycling.

Collectively, six investors were allegedly bilked of a total of $207,000 of Facebook and ARCIS shares. Most of it-- $154,000-- was meant for stocks of Facebook, the affidavit said.

Rodgers allegedly sold Facebook at $35 per share and posed as a "Michael Walsh." He is accused of cashing out $42,000 of those investments, according to the affidavit.

Hirsch allegedly controlled bank accounts with investors' money and did not use those investments to purchase shares of Facebook, authorities said. Attempts to reach Hirsch by phone were unsuccessful.

When Brenda Wippick, the daughter of one of the investors, Tom Wippick, learned that Rodgers was in jail Friday, she said: "That's a good place for him."

Her father, who owns an auto body shop in Connecticut, invested $10,500 on May 10, according to the arrest affidavit.

"Every once in a while you win and once in a while you don't win one," she said.

In months leading to Facebook stock going public in May, several South Florida cases involving questionable Facebook investments emerged.

John Mattera, a Fort Lauderdale businessman, was charged and pleaded not guilty in New York for allegedly drawing in $11 million from investors after claiming he owned private shares of companies like Facebook.

Another Fort Lauderdale investment adviser, George Elia, was also accused of orchestrating a Ponzi scheme and claiming he had access to Facebook IPO shares

By Erika Pesantes, Sun Sentinel