LIer accused of selling fake investments

A Hicksville man was accused by federal officials Thursday of participating in a $12-million scheme with four other men to sell shares they didn't own of highly coveted private companies including Facebook and Groupon.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Joseph Almazon, 22, principal of Spartan Capital Partners of Hicksville, with raising money for the scheme, improperly collecting commissions and violating federal securities laws covering the unregistered offering of securities and unregistered brokerages.

Almazon couldn't be reached for comment. His attorney did not return telephone calls.

A suit filed in federal court in Manhattan by the SEC said that beginning in the summer of 2010, two men, one from Florida and one from Montclair, N.J., formed a hedge fund, The Praetorian Global Fund, and claimed it and its affiliates owned shares worth tens of millions of dollars in privately held companies that intended to go public.

In reality, according to the SEC complaint, the men never owned the shares. The purported escrow fund, headed by a second Florida resident, merely transferred investor funds to personal accounts controlled by another defendant.

"By conjuring up a seemingly prestigious hedge fund and touting the safety of an escrow agent, these men exploited investors' desire to get an inside track on a wave of hyped future" initial public offerings, George S. Canellos, director of the SEC's New York office, said in a statement. The men raised $12 million, the SEC charged.

The SEC is seeking an emergency court order to freeze the assets of Almazon, the Montclair man and a defendant who lives in New York City, as well as eight business entities charged in the SEC's complaint.

The SEC's complaint alleged Almazon's Spartan Capital raised "at least $640,000," for the Praetorian entities.

The SEC said Spartan solicited investments by phone, word of mouth and advertisements on the professional networking website LinkedIn .com. One advertisement cited in the complaint read in part: Spartan "can offer the opportunity to buy pre-IPO shares of the following companies: Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, Bloom Energy, Fisker, and Groupon."