Several New Jersey seniors were scammed out of more than $1 million combined by a Long Island couple, Garden State authorities have charged.
Salvatore Magaraci, 63, and A. Kirsten Gallardo, 60, of Huntington, NY specifically targeted elderly victims to pitch unregistered securities to for a crooked – and now defunct — company, Acting New Jersey Attorney General Andrew J. Bruck said.
The Woodbridge Group of Companies purported to be a commercial lender that made hard-money loans secured by mortgages on commercial property. It ended up being ordered to pay $1 billion — and saw its founder sent to federal prison for 25 years — for defrauding 8,400 investors in a nationwide Ponzi scheme.
Neither Magaraci nor Gallardo were registered with the New Jersey Bureau of Securities, Bruck said, but that didn’t stop them from selling for Woodbridge between August 2016 and June 2017.
Magaraci even hosted the “Safe Money and Income Radio Show,” which aired weekly on two New Jersey radio stations: WMTR-AM and WCTC-AM, the attorney general noted.
“Over the years, I have worked with millions and millions of dollars for my clients. Guess what? Not one of them has lost a single penny,” Magaraci said during one show. “Let me say that again: Not a single client of mine has lost any of their money even during the worst market crashes since the Great Depression.”
In another episode, he asked: “Have I lost any of my clients’ money? The answer is a hundred…
