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Michael Kapoustin, Ponzi Scammer wants to Come Home to Canada

Petar Kostadinov, writing at the Sofia Echo, has a nice story about a Canadian bred fraud criminal - who wants to come home:

"Canadian citizen Michael Kapoustin, whose name has become synonymous with fraud and embezzlement, was released from a Bulgarian prison at the beginning of July 2008 five years before the end of his 17-year sentence.

He was released early for good behavior.

He is barred from leaving Bulgaria because he still owes money to certain people whom the court found to be victims of Kapoustin's business activities in the 1990s."

Ok, what did our boy do?

"Kapoustin was sentenced in 2003, although he had been under arrest since 1996. In 2001, Sofia City Court sentenced Kapoustin to 23 years, but his sentence was later reduced to 17 years by the Court of Appeals.

He has served his time in a low-security prison as confirmed by several TV interviews with him through the years.

Although he never admitted his crimes, Kapoustin was found guilty of setting up a business entity that Bulgarian media subsequently dubbed a "financial pyramid" because of the way it operated.

Hence Kap?ustin was also nicknamed as a "faraon".

This type of "pyramid" exploited the naivety and irrational expectations for quick profits of thousands of Bulgarians just five years after the fall of communism.

His trial was widely covered by Bulgarian-media, particularly by Sega in a series of articles.

I give up: how does 17 years in 2003 translate to out in 5 years, 2008?

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Full post as published by Misleading Advertising Law on July 04, 2008 (boomark / email).