Burlington County, N.J., Man Sentenced to Over Three Years in Prison for Two Business Schemes That Defrauded Investors of Approximately $550,000

PHILADELPHIA - United States Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero announced that Michael Salerno, 55, of Mount Laurel, New Jersey, was sentenced today by United States District Court Judge Paul S. Diamond to 37 months' imprisonment and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $549,835 in connection with multiple elaborate schemes that defrauded hundreds of investors out of more than half a million dollars.

Salerno was indicted for the schemes in September of 2020, and in February 2023, pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud.

Between September 2016 and at least November 2018, the defendant operated a series of businesses, including Black Diamond Forex, L.P., BDF Trading, L.P., Advanta Capital Markets, Inc., and Advanta FX, each of which purported to be in the business of trading foreign currencies. Using a variety of misrepresentations and omissions, Salerno induced victims to pay advance fees - up-front payments of typically more than $1,000 - in order to be hired by Salerno's company. He told the victims that, upon their hiring, he would make available to them a pool of $10 million that they could trade on the foreign currency market and take a generous cut of any profits. Each of these representations was false.

To make his fraudulent activities appear legitimate, Salerno held himself out as a sophisticated and successful businessman. He claimed that he had been a profitable currency trader, and to have managed a real estate empire, a portion of which he said he sold for $10 million to fund the currency-trading venture - none of which was true, either. In fact, he declared bankruptcy twice, most recently in 2015, and had been evicted multiple times from rental homes for failure to pay rent. In 2005, he pleaded guilty to federal tax charges and was sentenced to 21 months in prison. He failed to disclose any of this to the victims before taking their money, instead collecting more than $300,000 in advance fees and using the money for his own benefit.

The defendant's currency-trading scheme came to a halt when he was advised that he was the target of an FBI investigation and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission sought and obtained an injunction against Salerno and his businesses in 2018. However, Salerno turned immediately to a second scheme. Between May 2018 and at least December 2019, he operated a company called AccuOne Financial, Inc., which purported to be in the business of assisting clients in ridding themselves of unwanted automobile leases. It also purported to offer a different set of clients, whose personal credit precluded them from obtaining an automobile lease, access to automobile leases, low-interest vehicle loans, and credit repair services. But Salerno failed to do as promised, instead ripping off both sets of clients. The defendant took the unwanted vehicles from the first set of clients, made few, if any, of the required lease payments, and then gave the vehicles to the second set of clients who could not obtain their own leases, in exchange for substantial monthly fees. The predictable result of this house of cards-style scheme was that the clients who wanted to get out of their leases either continued to make monthly lease payments for cars they no longer had or suffered substantial damage to their credit, and the clients who leased cars from AccuOne often had them repossessed without warning. Salerno netted several hundred thousand dollars from this scheme alone.

"Michael Salerno is a modern-day snake oil salesman," said U.S. Attorney Romero. "Upon learning that his fraud scheme had caught the FBI's attention, he didn't close up shop and clean up his act - he simply pivoted to a different scheme. Today's sentence holds him accountable for the harm he's caused and brings a measure of justice for his victims. My office and the FBI are working every day to put scammers and swindlers like this out of business."

"Under the guise of a businessman, Salerno was truly a criminal, devising schemes built on manipulation and lies, which placed the financial security of his victims at risk," said Wayne A. Jacobs, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Philadelphia. "The FBI will continue to rigorously pursue those who attempt to enrich themselves through fraudulent means."

The case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Matthew Newcomer and former Assistant United States Attorney Christopher J. Mannion.