He rode around town in a Lexus, Maserati, Range Rover and a Jaguar. He flashed cash at South Florida casinos and funded overseas vacations. He told authorities he “lived with too much luxury.”
But it was with other people’s money.
A federal judge has sentenced Shayeh Dov to seven years in prison. He is a man who prosecutors say preyed on the goodwill and trust of South Florida’s orthodox Jewish community, for his role in an elaborate, multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.
Dov acted as a “predator” to persuade more than 30 people to invest in bogus real estate notes from May 2012 through April 2018, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. The losses are estimated at $3 million, according to records.
The transactions involved selling notes to investors that Dov and his companies did not own and were not for sale. “ln at least one instance, the defendant sold the same note to two separate investors approximately five days apart,” according to court records.
Rather than buy into the legal investments, he used investors’ money for travel to the Bahamas, Israel and New York, gambling, his own mortgage payments, luxury car lease expenses and partial payments to defrauded note investors.
