Stock scammer may drop a dime on pals
Eric Holder (AP)
Stock scammers better watch out!
A notorious pump-and-dump artist nabbed in an international sting operation in March is coming clean and has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Swiss national Jean-Pierre Neuhaus, 55, pleaded guilty in Brooklyn federal court yesterday to scheming to dump some $5 million in worthless stock on unsuspecting US investors.
Neuhaus — who has been in a Brooklyn lockup since his arrest — admitted to scheming with Roland Kaufmann, the CEO of shell company Axius Inc., to fix the price of the Dubai-based firm’s stock using kickbacks to unscrupulous brokers.
As part of the plea, Neuhaus has agreed to cooperate with authorities, which could lead to more arrests and expose the seedy underworld of stock manipulators, sources told The Post.
“I made false representations to people in order to buy and sell Axius stock so I would get a commission. I knew I was violating SEC laws when I did this,” Neuhuas said yesterday before Brooklyn federal Judge John Gleeson.
Officials with Attorney General Eric Holder’s office in Washington, whose criminal division is handling the case, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Neuhaus faces up to five years in prison, although his lawyer is asking for time served for the eight months spent in jail when he is sentenced next month.
“Today he pleaded guilty because he is guilty,” Neuhaus’ lawyer, Johanna Zapp, told The Post. “I would be thrilled if he was home by Christmas.”
Neuhaus, who has been held at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, has a wife waiting for him in Switzerland, where he lives, Zapp added.
As was exclusively reported by The Post, Nuehaus and Kaufman were nabbed in front of the tony Carlyle Hotel on 76th Street after they were lured to Manhattan by an undercover FBI agent.
The G-man was posing as an unscrupulous money man with access to a network of corrupt brokers. He told Kaufman and Neuhaus he would use their money to bribe a network of brokers to get Axius’ stock, which was priced around $3, to trade as high as $5 a share, prosecutors said.
To seal the deal, the agent convinced the two men to dine with him at the swank Upper East Side hotel.
Initially, Neuhaus was reluctant to come the US because of his last brush with the Securities and Exchange Commission involving a decade-old shady stock deal.
“I am not so comfortable in the States because in ’98 I was a witness in a stock thing,” he told the FBI agent.
Neuhaus was also involved in SpongeTech, an audacious scam that jilted dozens of sports venues, including Madison Square Garden and Citi Field, sources said.
Kaufman has pleaded not guilty and is under house arrest in NY. He was set to stand trial with Neuhaus on Jan. 28.
If prosecutors need Neuhaus to testify against Kaufman, he could remain in jail until the trial is over, a source told The Post.
With Mitch Maddux