Boca businessman gets prison for fraud

By Palm Beach Business.com

WEST PALM BEACH — A Boca Raton businessman has been sentenced to nearly six yerars in prison for wire and mail fraud.

Federal Judge Kenneth A. Marra sentenced  Steven D. Goldberg, 44, of Boca Raton, to 71 months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release.

Last August, Goldberg pleaded to eight counts of wire fraud and one count of mail fraud.
According to court records, Goldberg managed Goldberg & Associates, a Florida corporation that specialized in buying and selling distressed assets. In the distressed asset business, investors buy nonpaying receivable accounts at a highly discounted rate, and then converting them into paying accounts, with the goal of making a profit above the purchase price.

To execute the scheme, Goldberg negotiated the sale to investors of numerous nonpaying receivable accounts to which he did not have title. To continue the scheme, Goldberg often provided the investors with “bogus” wire transaction numbers and other bogus financial information.

According to prosecutors, investors lost more than $3.3 million as a result of Goldberg’s. Goldberg then took the victim investors’ money and used it for his personal benefit.