Boscarino, age 47, had pleaded guilty earlier this year to 43 charges including fraud, money laundering and tax evasion. In addition to a 135-month prison term, Boscarino was ordered to pay restitution of $6.5 million to 1,685 victims and also pay $1.3 million in unpaid taxes.
Boscarino used his sports handicapping Internet business, called Mike’s Lock Club, to solicit customers to invest in several fraudulent schemes.
One of his schemes involved soliciting money from investors to give to a fictitious high limit slot machine player who made regular trips to Las Vegas to play with investor money. The investors wired Boscarino more than $7,688,000 and he diverted approximately $5,000,000 through various financial institutions for his own personal use. This included approximately $4,000,000, which he wired to accounts maintained in Las Vegas casinos.
Boscarino made false statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which was investigating one of his schemes, and with evading paying taxes on more than $2.6 million in income in 2008 and 2009, and failing to pay $400,000 in back taxes he had agreed to pay after failing to file taxes from 1999 to 2006. Boscarino was a convicted felon in possession of two shotguns and one pistol recovered from his Phoenix residence.
The investigation of the crimes was conducted by the Tucson Offices of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.