I never liked Craig Carton. When I used to follow fools-ball, I was a big fan of NY’s #1 talk radio station — WFAN — with one marked exception to the morning show, which was hosted by Craig Carton and Boomer Esiason.
Apparently, my instincts were correct — as the FBI charged Carton with securities fraud today, for bilking investors for millions. The details are murky and I still don’t fully understand all of the details. One thing is for certain, he had indebted himself for millions at two casinos, in addition to $825,000 to one person — perhaps someone that didn’t like to be owed money.
To remedy the situation, Carton thought it was a good idea to risk his career, family, and freedom to conduct a boneheaded Ponzi scheme by selling investors ‘tickets’ — which amounted to a staggering $5.6m.
Apparently, Carton was soliciting investors to buy blocks of tickets to his live events at a discount, enabling them to resell them at a profit. This is high tier degeneracy.
In a separate civil case unveiled on Wednesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Carton had racked up millions of dollars in gambling debts to casinos and others by the time he began soliciting investors in the ticket scheme, in which he told investors he had access to millions of dollars worth of tickets to concerts by Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Adele and other performers.
Carton negotiated for $10 million in financing from an unnamed hedge fund to help purchase tickets in return for a cut of the profit from the resale of the tickets, according to the government’s complaint dated Tuesday and filed at the federal court in Manhattan. But they planned to use the financing to pay back debt instead.
The government said the fraud took place from September through December last year. The complaint details emails and text messages in which the men tried to figure out how to juggle debts with incoming investor money.
In a September email, Wright discussed with Carton and a third unnamed individual more than $1 million in debt shortly coming due: “Run to Costa Rica, change name, and start life all over again — may not be an option.”
“As you know it’s a game,” Wright told Carton in an October email, according to the government’s complaint.
The hedge fund, though unnamed by the government, was described as a “global investment management firm based in New York.”
Carton and his co-defendent, Michael Wright, were charged with securities fraud and conspiracy and now face 45 years in prison.
“Behind all the talk, the Carton and Wright show was just a sham, designed to fleece investors out of millions ultimately to be spend on payments to casinos and … other personal debt,” said U.S. Attorney Joon Kim.
Here’s Boomer Esiason telling his listeners today that his partner was arrested.
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buying tickets to live events and selling them for profit….if that’s a crime how do ticket master, stub hub, and 3rd party scalping companies exist?
He stole investors money to pay off his debts. that’s the illegal part
Sounds like there weren’t actually millions in tickets. Lying about things like this tends to run afoul of fraud laws.
45 years for securities fraud, 15-20 years for manslaughter, shows what our society values.
Even though I live in Florida I sometimes listen to WFAN (on the internets- sometimes watch on CBS Sports) in the AM usually while eating breakfast. I listen for the entertainment value.
I like Boomer’s insight and Carton I thought played good cop, bad cop.
Carton’s on air persona was (is?) one of NYC brash while doing a bunch of charity stuff.
I bet this give Chris Christie another chance to try out for WFAN as Boomer’s sidekick.
how is the blue radio?
Ha, you remember.
Carton was the bad-boy hustler to Boomer’s squeaky clean local boy-makes good. He could be a dick but this sounds bad. But since it’s a white-collar crime he will just have to say he’s sorry and file bankruptcy. Of course three-finger Mikey will do what he has to do. Fuckin’ gamblers.
Moron