Remember a few months back when I wrote about the insane fraud perpetrated by the men behind Gryphon Holdings? The guys who thought it was a good idea to falsify endorsements from George Soros and the Financial Times? Yeah, those guys… Well, it turns out they might have ties to the mob. Like, the Gambinos–the crime family once led by John Gotti. I couldn’t make this up if I tried.

According to FINalternatives, Federal prosecutors have charged nine more people in the Gryphon Holdings case, bringing the total number of people charged in the case to 14. Among the newly charged is Michael Scarpaci, an alleged Gambino associate, who already faces racketeering charges in a separate federal case.

According to prosecutors and the SEC, which also filed a parallel civil suit, Gryphon holdings defrauded investors out of $17.5 million. They allege that Gryphon claimed to be a $1.4 billion fund and garnered clients—many of them elderly—through unsolicited e-mails and telephone calls.

FINalternatives reports,

Once they had contact information, the firm’s employees allegedly used high-pressure sales tactics and a variety a fraudulent tactics to get between $99 and $250,000 for its investment advice.

In addition to its fictitious hedge fund, authorities say Gryphon had fictitious offices in Manhattan, London and Sydney, Australia—it was actually run from a Staten Island strip mall—and fictitious traders, Michael Warren and Kenneth Maseka, who the SEC say were “figments of” Gryphon president Kenneth Marsh’s imagination.

All 14 of those arrested have plead not guilty. They each face 20 years in jail if convicted.

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