Recidivist Fraudster Douglas E. Castle Sentenced To More Than Four Years In Prison For Defrauding Investors

Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that DOUGLAS E. CASTLE, the owner of Global Edge Technologies Group LLC, a financial consulting firm located in Somers, New York (“Global Edge”), was sentenced yesterday to 50 months in prison for defrauding certain investors (the “Victims”) out of over $800,000 dollars.  CASTLE pled guilty to one count of wire fraud on July 26, 2018.  The sentence was imposed by United States District Judge Kenneth M. Karas.

U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said:  “Douglas E. Castle took money from investors under false pretenses, lied to the FBI, and then lied to victims by telling them he was working with the FBI.  Now he has been sentenced to more than four years in prison for his litany of lies.”

According to the Complaint, Information, and other documents filed in the case, as well as statements made during court proceedings:

On June 25, 2003, CASTLE was sentenced in federal court to 34 months in prison and three years of supervised release for his conviction on an investment fraud scheme that caused investor losses of over $1.2 million.  Approximately five years after completing supervised release on that offense, CASTLE perpetrated the investment fraud scheme for which he was sentenced yesterday.

From about 2014 through 2017, CASTLE defrauded at least three victims of over $800,000, including by encouraging an aging window (“Victim-1”) prematurely to withdraw funds from her tax-advantaged retirement savings account to invest with CASTLE.  CASTLE misrepresented that he would invest Victim-1’s funds with a United Kingdom-based investment firm (“Firm-1”) that purportedly guaranteed the safety of the invested principal.  CASTLE represented that he previously invested his own money with Firm-1, but that because Firm-1 had high minimum investment thresholds, Victim-1 could invest her funds only by adding her money on top of CASTLE’s investment.  For that reason, CASTLE said the investment would be structured as a loan between CASTLE’s own financial consulting firm, Global Edge, and Victim-1.  In truth, as CASTLE knew, Firm-1 did not exist, and CASTLE spent Victim-1’s money instead on his own personal expenses, cash withdrawals, and eventually, in overseas transfers to individuals in Ghana and elsewhere who perpetrated an advance fee scam on CASTLE himself.  CASTLE also defrauded at least two other victims into investing funds with him under false pretenses. 

On June 8, 2016, CASTLE participated in a voluntary interview with the FBI in which he lied about the source of a particular transfer of Victim-1’s money he made to a Ghana bank account.  After this meeting with the FBI, CASTLE continued to lie to victims to raise more money.  After CASTLE came to realize that he would not receive a multimillion-dollar windfall in exchange for transferring his and his victims’ money, CASTLE attempted to preclude his victims from reporting the fraud to law enforcement by falsely claiming that he was already working with the FBI and multiple other law enforcement agencies on their behalf to recover their funds. 

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In addition to his prison term, CASTLE, 64, of Somers, New York, was sentenced to three years of supervised release, a forfeiture money judgment in the amount of $825,000, and restitution in the amount of $849,800.

Mr. Berman praised the outstanding investigative work of the Federal Bureau Investigation and thanked the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations for their assistance.

The case is being prosecuted by the Office’s White Plains Division.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Vladislav Vainberg is in charge of the prosecution.