When Sanjay Singh, a former pilot and flight instructor, launched a moving business in South Florida just before the pandemic hit in early 2000, his timing was not only bad — he had lousy credit. No bank would lend him any money.
So Singh and his associates tapped into a private network of mostly working-class investors, borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars with the promise of paying them double-digit returns and ownership of the trucks in his company, Royal Bengal Logistics Inc.
In the end, about 1,500 investors — from nurses to school teachers to military veterans of mostly Haitian descent — fell for Singh’s sales pitch and lost more than $50 million in what federal prosecutors have described as a “Ponzi scheme.” In Fort Lauderdale federal court, a dozen jurors began deliberations on Wednesday afternoon to decide Singh’s fate on conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering charges, which carry prison terms in the 10- to 20-year range.
Go to Herald.com for the full report.