Fla. Businessman Guilty - Gets 12+ Years For 50M
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Posted On: 09/19/2013 10:53:06 AM
Fla. Businessman Guilty - Gets 12+ Years For 50M Fraud
Claudio Osorio pled guilty to bilking investors in his company Innovdia, which was to build
homes for displaced victims of the Haiti earthquake.
Osorio and his wife hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton at their former Miami Beach home on Star Island.
Osorio and his former Chief Financial Officer Craig Toll, 64, also applied for and obtained a $10 million loan from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a U.S. government agency.
The loan was intended to help build a manufacturing facility in Haiti and 500 homes for families in Haiti after a devastating earthquake in 2010 left an estimated 250,000 people dead and more than one million homeless.
Prosecutors said Osorio "used the OPIC loan proceeds to repay investors and for his and his co-conspirators' personal benefit and to further the fraud scheme."
Osorio, who was born in Venezuela, pitched the company and its products as a possible solution to help build affordable houses in developing countries that were resistant to fire and hurricanes.
InnoVida, he said, manufactured fiber composite panels that could be used to build homes and other buildings without cement, steel or wood.
Prosecutors said that Osorio defrauded investors from 2007 to 2010, exaggerating the company's finances twenty-fold and pocketing millions of dollars to fund a lavish lifestyle.
Osorio illegally used more than $8 million of investor money to pay for such luxuries as a mansion in Miami Beach, a Maserati and a Colorado mountain retreat home, according to prosecutors.
As the company slid into bankruptcy, Osorio was forced to sell many of his assets . Some investors, concerned about the company's finances, filed lawsuits against him in an effort to get their money back.
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