A disbarred Florida lawyer surrendered to the FBI on Tuesday and pleaded not guilty to charges he ran a complex Ponzi scheme that bilked investors out of more than $1 billion.
Scott Rothstein, who fled to Morocco in late October but returned to Florida in early November, was denied bond during a brief appearance before a federal magistrate in Fort Lauderdale.
He was charged with racketeering conspiracy under a statute often used to prosecute organized crime chiefs and drug lords.
Rothstein, who was disbarred last week by the Florida Supreme Court, also was charged with mail, wire and bank fraud, and money laundering. He faces up to 20 years in prison on the racketeering charge and up to 100 years if convicted on all counts, plus forfeiture of tens of millions of dollars in illegal profits.
The FBI said that Rothstein, 47, had been selling shares in fabricated legal settlements to unsuspecting investors since at least 2005, using new investor money to pay previous investors in the classic Ponzi scheme model.
He claimed to have won lucrative awards in workplace discrimination and whistle-blower lawsuits, when no such settlements existed, federal investigators said.
Rothstein pleaded not guilty to all the charges. His lawyer, Marc Nurik, said after the hearing that Rothstein was "going to try to do the right thing" for his investors.
"My client wishes to see that legitimate investors get paid their money back," Nurik told journalists, without specifying how that might be done.
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