Internet Fraud Casebook

Chapter 26. No Security In Online Advance Fees

DR. IVO GEORGE CAYTAS

Hannes Wogner was a businessman and property owner in Germany who provided local representation and other corporate services for foreign companies. Among his most valuable contacts was Hassan Roban, a nightclub owner, architect and financial broker in Istanbul who had a lucrative sideline operation in loan sharking. Roban also controlled a network of financially insubstantial but loyal Turkish expatriates in Germany and elsewhere, and a few unlicensed brokers in London and New York. Wogner preferred to work through layers of straw men that usually involved Hernando Paria and his Belizean offshore company, China-Spanish Holdings Ltd. Wogner's contacts also included Londoner Marvin Gibbons, a father of six children who had successfully escaped prosecution by the Serious Fraud Office of England. Their mutual friend was Philipp Pepperman, an almost-retired attorney in a New York suburb with more than 50 years of experience who, for the last decade, had confined his law practice to serving as an escrow agent for investments that were structured, marketed and supposedly operated by members of this informal network based outside the United States. Their deals involved seven-figure start-up fees that, as the brokers claimed, were required by the banks issuing and trading the securities, and by other banks that provided capital for investors who did not have it available themselves. Pep-perman's much younger wife was also ...