Man gets jail for scam that stole from families, Sacramento Slavic Assistance Center
A man was sentenced to two years in jail for stealing nearly $150,000 from four families and the Slavic Assistance Center in Sacramento in an investment scam, the California Attorney General’s Office announced Tuesday.
Aleksander Sushko, the operator of a phony company called Smart Choice, was convicted in February after pleading guilty to one felony count for operating a fraudulent security scheme, state prosecutors said in a news release.
Sushko’s securities scheme resulted in the theft of over $146,000 from the families and the Slavic Assistance Center from 2014 through 2016, according to prosecutors. Along with his jail sentence, the court has ordered Sushko to pay nearly $119,000 in restitution owed to the victims.
The prosecutors said Sushko promised the victims he was investing their money, but he never did. Instead, Sushko used the investment money for his own financial gain, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
When the investment was due to mature, Sushko would issue a promissory note and tell the investors he did not have the money at present but he would pay them later, prosecutors said.
“It takes a pretty depraved heart to cheat families out of their savings,” said Attorney General Xavier Becerra in the news release. “The sad fact is there are plenty of predatory, bogus companies ready to rip us off in a heartbeat.”
The case against Sushko was the result of an investigation by the state Department of Justice’s White Collar Investigations Team.
