Peter J. Pintarics The Carlo Ponzi of Pelican Bay By:
Bill E. Branscum
Copyright 2011
Peter Janos Pintarics, who calls himself "Doctor Pintarics," is a sixty-three (63) year old con artist, born March 15, 1948, who relocated to Naples, Florida after things got too hot for him on the west coast. The fraud schemes he promoted in Washington state resulted in a Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization civil action and a Cease and Desist Order.
Pintarics fled Washington with his girlfriend, Tien Quynh Hoang, a thirty-six year old Asian female born December 27, 1974, and their minor child. Pintarics established a residence at 847 Tanbark Drive, Apartment 105, in Naples, Florida, giving him access to the affluent residents of this exclusive neighborhood known as Pelican Bay.
According to several victims, Pintarics hustled the tennis courts, and networked through the people he met, representing himself to be a successful Investment Advisor.
In an email to one victim, dated Saturday, November 07, 2009, Pintarics described his system as follows. “My system allows to instantly find stocks with the best combination of value, safety and timing by blending a stock’s relative value (RV), relative safety (RS) and relative timing (RT) into a single indicator. The fact is…this is probably as close as investors’ll ever come to having an investment guarantee.”
Pintarics went on to say, “The best way to make money in any market is to buy low and sell high, and nobody makes that process easier than my system. There’s no guesswork. No hunches. No predictions. Just factual, objective trend analysis. My proven market timing system gets us into the market when prices are low and out of the market when prices are high. And it’s never failed to call a major market turn for more than 8 years.”
Pintarics email signature line identified him as, “Peter J. Pintarics Ph. D, Trustee, International Management - Finance - Confidential Investments”
Another victim reported that Pintarics claimed that he had developed a unique and proprietary system of wealth preservation that involved the diversification of investment across four areas: FOREX (currency trading), Precious Metals (gold), Shorting/Hedging and Penny Stocks.
After defrauding local investors of several hundred thousand dollars, Pintarics absconded to Panama where he is apparently continuing to perpetrate fraud schemes, doing business as:
International Capital Group S.A., and
International Capital Investment Group
IPASA Building, Third Floor,
41st Street and Balboa Avenue,
Panama City, Panama
(507) 67112692
www.icigroupsa.com
Email: hedgevcapital@comcast.net
Although Pintarics claims to have a PhD, his ability to express himself in writing is abysmal; investigation reveals that he is conspicuously silent as to the source of his undergraduate and/or postgraduate degrees.
An email to one of his victims, dated October 28, 2007, read like this:
"I am a well educated and informed private investor. I traveled all over the world in 84 countries and built a worldwide network. We have the information regarding what is and will happening economically in the US and the world. I am helping to my friends to save and grow their assets in this situation of inflation, recession, dollar devaluation, which is once a life time opportunity for minimum three years. My major fields are currency trade, precious metal trade and international ETF [ Exchange Trading Funds]."
Pintarics touted his system called the Strategy Plan For Wealth. In an email sent to his network on October 30, 2009, he said, "This Strategy Plan For Wealth is so effective because it takes every scrap of guesswork, every scintilla of opinion, every baseless assumption and every iota of emotion OUT of the investment decisions. What is left is as solid as the rock of Gibraltar."
According to Pintarics, part of the secret to his investment success was astrology. In an email sent to his network on May 7, 2009, Pintarics said, "Given that the markets are very emotional and psychological, it is no surprise that the planetary cycles have an effect on market behavior . . . I use planetary cycles as a filter and combine them with traditional technical tools and pattern recognition to increase my chances of winning."
As will be further explicated and supported herein, Pintarics' "Strategy Plan For Wealth" had nothing to do with astrology, or diversification of investment. As was the case with the original Ponzi scheme, an analysis of Pintaric's financial records revealed thaat there was no underlying investment strategy at all - Pintarics simply preyed upon members of the Pelican Bay community, many of whom were elderly, and absconded to Panama withe the funds that were entrusted to him.
For example, according to the Declaration of Dr. Filippi available below, Pintarics persuaded him to invest $100,000 on January 24, 2008. During the year that followed, Pintarics convinced Dr. Filippi, who is in his eighties, that his system predicted some sort of cataclysmic economic disaster. According to Dr. Filippi, "On November 20,2008, in fear of losing my life's savings in the financial collapse that Pintarics predicted, I gave Pintarics a check for $200,000."
Looking at Pintarics' Chase account statement ending November 2008, which is available in its entirety below, we see a deposit for $200,000 on November 21, 2008.
This deposit was Dr. Ronald K. Filippi's Fidelity Investments check number 1932, dated November 20, 2008. Note that this account was almost empty at the time this deposit was made.
In examining Pintarics' financial records, we do not see outgoing money to investment brokers, or trading accounts. What we do see is the standard Ponzi activity - investment funds came in which, according to Dr. Filippi's Declaration, represented his life's savings, and payments to other investors went out. Dr. Ronald A. Sorvino received a check for $100,000 as soon as the incoming deposit check cleared, a $25,000 check a few weeks later, a $2500 check two weeks later and another check for $75,000 in March 2009.
According to Pintarics' Chase account statement for December, there were no deposits to the account; therefore, the $25,000 payment to Dr. Sorvino was a Ponzi payment from Dr. Filippi's investment.
Dr. Sorvino received two other small checks as well.
During the seventeen month period for which the records are provided below, no other investor received a check in excess of $20,000, and there was only one of those.
Aside from the six checks to Dr. Sorvino totaling $206,000, three other investors received a total of five (5) checks from Pintaric; one received a check for $16,000, one received two checks totaling $25,000 and one received two checks totaling $12,500. Others received nothing at all..
I contacted Dr. Sorvino; he referred me to an attorney who declined to discuss the case with me.
