Teenage web fraudster returns $900,000 to victims

NEWS A US teenager has been collared by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after raising $1m through an internet scam. Seventeen-year-old Cole Bartiromo conned around 1,000 investors with an internet bulletin board advertisement promising risk free investment. Bartiromo has returned $900,000 of his ill-gotten gains to the SEC from a private Costa Rican bank account. In a separate case, another internet fraudster, William Caudell from Florida, is informing on his business partners as part of a court deal to reduce his 14-year sentence. Caudell was sentenced as CEO and founder of Professional Resource Systems, a company which ripped-off 48,000 investors worldwide. In return for his co-operation, Caudell only has to serve 11 years of the sentence and this may be reduced further depending on the success of an operation acting on his information to catch at least another 10 people involved in the scam. The company charged customers a $295 application fee for a small office/home office system which was supposed to give users their own website in an internet shopping centre - though in reality the shopping centre didn't exist. Caudell said the enterprise started off legitimately but fell into the wrong hands.