A
51-year-old German national wanted by law enforcement authorities in Germany
for using his Florida-based financial firm to defraud investors of more than
$100 million in a pyramid scheme was arrested last week in Las Vegas by special
agents and officers of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE)
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), ICE's Enforcement and Removal
Operations (ERO), the U.S. Marshals Service and the Las Vegas Metropolitan
Police Department.
Ulrich Felix
Anton Engler is the subject of an international warrant issued December 4, 2007
in Mannheim, Germany. He is wanted on multiple criminal charges for jointly
committing fraud on a repetitive and gainful basis, filed in the local court in
Mannheim and Hamburg, Germany.
As gathered,
Engler conducted the illegal scheme from his Florida office from June 2003 to
December 2004 and used a marketing company which he had set up utilizing the
Internet to defraud numerous investors in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. He
falsely claimed to trade in shares and other securities in the form of so-called
day trading through his company, Private Commercial Office, in Cape Coral. In
total, Engler concluded 3,549 such contracts with investors involving a total
sum of $100,896,836.61. The investors suffered damages in the amount of their
investment capital. Once they had transferred the money to the United States,
they no longer had any possibility to access the money.
At the time
the arrest warrant was issued in Germany, Engler was believed to have been
residing in Florida. In 2011, the U.S. Marshals Service in conjunction with
INTERPOL Washington determined that Engler was perpetuating his fraudulent
schemes in Nevada under the name of Joseph Miller. A
fingerprint match in a Las Vegas-area drunken driving case in February led the
authorities to the German fugitive.
Engler is
currently in ERO custody pending deportation to Germany where he will be turned
over to law enforcement authorities. If convicted for his alleged crimes, he
faces up to 20 years in prison.
More criminal charges related articles available at Criminal Defense Blog.