Scammers are everywhere. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten emails and texts that I know are fake but could easily entrap someone who is gullible or has let their guard down. So it’s always nice to see a scammer get his comeuppance.
One story out of New York is satisfying because this scammer received a sentence of nearly four years in prison. The Daily News reports:
Thomas Sfraga, 56, who gained some internet fame as a crypto guru named “T.J. Stone,” was sentenced to three years and nine months in prison in Brooklyn Federal Court Thursday for defrauding 14 investors out of $1.5 million.
He ran a variety of schemes from 2019 to 2022 including taking their money to renovate their homes, telling them he was buying houses to flip and sell for profit, offering to buy them into a major construction contract, and getting them to invest in a cryptocurrency “virtual wallet” with their cash.
Sfraga was instead lining his pockets and using some of money from later investors to pay his earlier victims. The feds stay he may have stolen closer to $2 million, since three more victims came forward after his May guilty plea to a wire fraud charge.
But there’s a hilarious twist to this story. Sfraga used a company name that would be familiar to fans of ‘90s sitcoms and should ring a bell with New Yorkers.
He called one of his companies Vandelay Construction Corp. For the uninitiated, Vandelay is a name that pops up multiple times on “Seinfeld.” In the first season, Jerry and George stake out the office building of a woman Jerry is interested in, and they use the excuse that they’re waiting to have lunch with the made-up “Art Vandelay.”
In the third season, George is trying to get an extension on his unemployment benefits even though he hasn’t been looking for a job. So he gives the unemployment counselor Jerry’s address and phone number and tells her that he applied for a job with “Vandelay Industries.” Naturally, it all goes wrong.
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Sfraga was a particularly nasty scammer because he scammed people he knew.
“Sfraga stole from a wide assortment of victims that came into his life — he targeted friends and next-door neighbors, the parents of children that played on his child’s sports teams, his child’s baseball coach, grade school acquaintances, people he met at crypto events, and a newlywed couple looking to invest some of the money they’d gotten as gifts, according to federal prosecutors,” reports the Daily News.
“Remember me, Tommy? Yeah,” one victim addressed Sfraga in court. “We were next-door neighbors. Next-door neighbors, literally next door… We would barbecue together. I’d watch his kids play soccer. He was at my son’s wedding.”
“Losing this money has not only affected my finances but has caused a strain on my marriage,” said another, whom Sfraga conned out of $100,000 in wedding gift money. “My wife and I are living in a basement apartment with our 2-year-old son … Due to constant worries about our living situation, we are unable to consider expanding our family right now, because we financially cannot.”
Sfraga said that he will spend “every waking moment of my existence on redemption.”
“I’m sorry for weaponizing the trust and the faith that was bestowed upon me,” he said. “I’m sorry for turning a group of friends that I love so dearly into a list of victims that despise me so deeply.”
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