Mount Laurel Man Swindled Victims With Fake Businesses, FBI Says

MOUNT LAUREL, NJ — A Mount Laurel man is facing 23 counts of wire fraud and six counts of mail fraud in connection with multiple schemes in which he conned victims out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, federal authorities announced on Friday.

Michael Salerno, 51, was arrested and indicted after running the scheme for a little more than two years, according to First Assistant United States Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams.

Salerno ran a series of businesses, including Black Diamond Forex, L.P., BDF Trading, L.P., Advanta Capital Markets, Inc., and Advanta FX, each of which purported to be in the business of trading foreign currencies between September 2016 and November 2018, according to Williams.

Salerno charged victims prices of more than $1,000 each to be hired by his company, Williams said. Through a series of misrepresentations and omissions, he convinced them to pay up front, according to Williams.

For instance, he told victims that upon being hired, they would have access to a pool of $10 million which they could trade on the foreign currency market, and take a generous cut of any profits, Williams said.

However, he was lying, Williams said. But to make his claims appear legitimate, Salerno portrayed himself in such a way as to appear as a sophisticated and successful businessman, Williams said.
Salerno claimed that he had sold part of a real estate empire — that he never actually managed — for $10 million to fund the currency-trading venture, Williams said.

Salerno also falsely claimed that he had been a profitable currency trader, Williams said. The truth was that he declared bankruptcy twice, most recently in 2015, and had been evicted multiple times from rental homes for failure to pay rent, according to Williams.

In 2005, he pleaded guilty to federal tax charges and was sentenced to 21 months in prison, but his victims never knew that, Williams said.

The FBI’s Eastern District of Pennsylvania opened an investigation into Williams’ activities, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission sought and obtained an injunction against Salerno and his businesses in 2018, Williams said.

Instead of this being the end, Salerno turned to another scheme, according to Williams. Between May 2018 and at least December 2019, Salerno operated a company called AccuOne Financial, Inc., Williams said.

AccuOne purported to be in the business of assisting clients in ridding themselves of unwanted automobile leases, according to Williams. It also purported to offer a different set of clients, whose personal credit precluded them from obtaining an automobile lease, access to automobile leases, low interest vehicle loans, and credit repair services, Williams said.

Of course, Salerno failed to deliver on this promise, as well, according to Williams. Instead, Williams said Salerno took the unwanted vehicles from the first set of clients, made few — if any — of the required lease payments, and then gave the vehicles to the second set of clients who could not obtain their own leases, in exchange for substantial monthly fees.

As a result, the first set of clients continued to make payments continued to make monthly lease payments for cars they no longer had, or suffered substantial damage to their credit, according to Williams.

And the clients who leased cars from AccuOne often had them repossessed without warning. As for Salerno, he netted several hundred thousand dollars from this scheme alone, Williams said.

“When Salerno’s foreign currency trading scheme came crashing down around him, he very quickly moved on to an alternative way of swindling people out of their money with car leases and loans,” Williams said. “The damage done by such corrupt financial schemes can be catastrophic to innocent people’s credit and financial security. We will continue to hold those who commit crimes like the ones alleged here accountable for their misdeeds.”

If convicted, Salerno faces up to 580 years in prison, three years supervised release, a fine of $7,250,000 and full restitution.