Anthony Pellegrino

A summary of what happened?

Anthony Pellegrino is a co-founder of Goldstone Financial Group (GFG), an investment advisory firm based in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois. Between May 2017 and June 2018, GFG offered and sold approximately $37 million in unregistered securities of 1 Global Capital LLC to their clients. These transactions were conducted without adequate disclosure of the substantial fees GFG received from 1 Global, totaling around $1.6 million.

1 Global Capital marketed its investments as safe alternatives to the stock market, claiming high returns from its merchant cash advance business. However, the company was later revealed to be fraudulent, misappropriating investor funds for personal use and unrelated business ventures. This led to significant financial losses for investors when 1 Global filed for bankruptcy in July 2018.

In response to the fallout, Anthony Pellegrino contributed approximately $1.3 million of his personal funds to facilitate a settlement with affected investors. Despite these efforts, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) found that GFG and its principals failed to disclose the referral fees received from 1 Global, constituting a breach of their fiduciary duties. Consequently, the SEC imposed remedial sanctions and a cease-and-desist order against GFG, Anthony Pellegrino, and his brother Michael Pellegrino.

This case underscores the critical importance of transparency and adherence to regulatory standards in investment advisory practices to protect investors from fraudulent schemes.

Analyzing the Fake Copyright Notice(s)

Our team collects and analyses fraudulent copyright takedown requests, legal complaints, and other efforts to remove critical information from the internet. Through our investigative reporting, we examine the prevalence and operation of an organized censorship industry, predominantly funded by criminal entities, oligarchs, and disreputable businesses or individuals. Our findings allow internet users to gain insight into these censorship schemes’ sources, methods, and underlying objectives.

What was Anthony Pellegrino trying to hide?

Anthony Pellegrino‘s attempts to hide unfavourable content through the misuse of copyright notices while allegedly engaging in perjury present serious legal concerns. These actions suggest a calculated attempt to manipulate legal systems to suppress free speech, a fundamental violation of copyright law principles and an abuse of legal processes. The use of such tactics not only undermines the integrity of copyright protection but also potentially constitutes perjury, further entangling Anthony Pellegrino in legal accountability. Let’s examine the information Anthony Pellegrino may be trying to remove from the internet –

Investigative Report: Anthony Pellegrino and the 1 Global Capital Fraud Case

Anthony Pellegrino, a prominent investment advisor and co-founder of Goldstone Financial Group (GFG), found himself entangled in one of the most notable securities fraud cases involving 1 Global Capital LLC. The fallout from the scandal has left investors grappling with significant losses and raised questions about transparency and fiduciary responsibility within the financial advisory industry. This report provides an in-depth look into the allegations, SEC actions, and broader implications of Pellegrino’s involvement.

1. Background on Anthony Pellegrino and Goldstone Financial Group

Goldstone Financial Group, co-founded by Anthony Pellegrino, is an investment advisory firm based in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois. The firm marketed itself as a trustworthy partner for clients seeking secure investment options, especially for retirement planning.

Between May 2017 and June 2018, Pellegrino and his firm actively promoted and sold investments in 1 Global Capital LLC to their clients. These investments were touted as secure, high-yield alternatives to traditional stock market options. GFG raised approximately $37 million from its clients during this period.

2. The 1 Global Capital Investment Scheme

1 Global Capital LLC claimed to operate as a merchant cash advance (MCA) business, where it provided short-term loans to small businesses. Investors were led to believe that their funds would finance these loans and generate high returns, advertised as a low-risk alternative to conventional investment vehicles.

However, investigations revealed that:

• Misrepresentation of Business Practices: 1 Global was not using all the funds for legitimate MCA operations. A significant portion of the money was diverted for personal enrichment and unrelated business activities.
• Ponzi Scheme Elements: Investor payouts were often made using funds from new investors rather than profits from actual operations.
• Financial Collapse: In July 2018, 1 Global Capital filed for bankruptcy, leaving thousands of investors with substantial losses.

3. Pellegrino’s Role and Allegations

Anthony Pellegrino, alongside his brother and co-founder Michael Pellegrino, played a pivotal role in promoting 1 Global’s securities. As investment advisors, they were obligated to act in the best interests of their clients, but their conduct raised serious concerns:

A. Failure to Disclose Referral Fees

• Pellegrino and his firm failed to disclose that GFG was receiving significant referral fees for directing client investments to 1 Global.
• The SEC investigation revealed that GFG earned approximately $1.6 million in undisclosed fees from 1 Global.
• This non-disclosure constituted a breach of fiduciary duty, as clients were not made aware of the potential conflict of interest.

B. Promotion of Unregistered Securities

• The investments in 1 Global Capital were unregistered securities, meaning they had not been approved by the SEC or any regulatory body.
• By offering these unregistered securities, Pellegrino and GFG violated federal securities laws.

C. Misleading Clients

• Clients were assured that these investments were secure, despite the lack of adequate due diligence on 1 Global’s financial practices.
• Many investors, including retirees, placed their trust in GFG, only to face significant financial losses when 1 Global collapsed.

4. SEC Actions and Sanctions

In March 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued an administrative order against Anthony Pellegrino, Michael Pellegrino, and Goldstone Financial Group. Key findings and outcomes included:

A. Violations Cited

• Securities Act of 1933, Section 5: Unregistered offering of securities.
• Advisers Act of 1940, Section 206: Breach of fiduciary duty due to undisclosed conflicts of interest and inadequate disclosure.

B. Cease-and-Desist Order

The SEC imposed a cease-and-desist order prohibiting Pellegrino and GFG from engaging in similar practices in the future.

C. Financial Restitution

• Anthony Pellegrino contributed approximately $1.3 million of personal funds to a settlement aimed at partially compensating affected investors.
• Additional fines and penalties were levied against GFG and its principals to deter future violations.

D. Bar from the Industry

As a result of the SEC’s findings, Anthony Pellegrino was barred from associating with any broker, dealer, investment advisor, or other financial entity regulated by the SEC.

5. Broader Implications

The Pellegrino case highlights several systemic issues within the investment advisory industry:

• Transparency and Fiduciary Responsibility: Advisors are entrusted with their clients’ financial futures. Undisclosed referral fees and conflicts of interest undermine this trust.
• Due Diligence on Third-Party Investments: The lack of adequate vetting of 1 Global Capital by Pellegrino and his firm underscores the need for rigorous due diligence before recommending third-party investment products.
• Investor Education: Many of GFG’s clients were retirees or inexperienced investors. Their losses highlight the vulnerability of individuals who rely on advisors for financial guidance.

6. Investor Fallout

Thousands of investors who placed their trust in 1 Global Capital were left with substantial losses when the company filed for bankruptcy. Many of these investors were clients of Pellegrino’s Goldstone Financial Group, who had been assured that their investments were secure.

Stories of Loss

• Several retirees reported losing their life savings, with little hope of recovering their funds.
• Some investors were unaware of the high risks associated with 1 Global investments until after the company collapsed.

7. Public Reaction and Industry Response

The Pellegrino case and others like it have prompted calls for:

• Stronger Regulatory Oversight: To prevent unregistered securities from being marketed to retail investors.
• Enhanced Advisor Accountability: Ensuring that advisors disclose all conflicts of interest and adhere to fiduciary standards.

The financial advisory community has faced increased scrutiny, with regulators emphasizing the need for transparency and ethical practices.

Conclusion: A Cautionary Tale

The case of Anthony Pellegrino and 1 Global Capital serves as a stark reminder of the importance of transparency and fiduciary responsibility in the financial advisory industry. While Pellegrino’s settlement efforts demonstrated some accountability, the damage to investors and the erosion of trust in the advisory profession remain significant.

Key Lessons:

• For Investors: Always demand full disclosure of fees and potential conflicts of interest from advisors.
• For Advisors: Fiduciary duty is paramount. Transparency and due diligence are non-negotiable responsibilities.
• For Regulators: Increased oversight and enforcement are critical to protecting vulnerable investors from similar schemes in the future.

Pellegrino’s actions, though partially rectified through financial restitution, underscore the devastating impact of breaches of trust in the financial industry.

How do we counteract this malpractice?

Once we ascertain the involvement of Anthony Pellegrino (or actors working on behalf of Anthony Pellegrino), we will inform Anthony Pellegrino of our findings via Electronic Mail.

Our preliminary assessment suggests that Anthony Pellegrino may have engaged a third-party reputation management agency or expert, which, either independently or under direct authorization from Anthony Pellegrino, initiated efforts to remove adverse online content, including potentially fraudulent DMCA takedown requests. We will extend an opportunity to Anthony Pellegrino to provide details regarding their communications with the agency or expert, as well as the identification of the individual(s) responsible for executing these false DMCA notices.

Failure to respond in a timely manner will necessitate a reassessment of our initial assumptions. In such an event, we will be compelled to take appropriate legal action to rectify the unlawful conduct and take the following steps –

Since Anthony Pellegrino made such efforts to hide something online, it seems fit to ensure that this article and sensitive information targeted online by these events get a lot more exposure and traffic than what it would have received originally

We hope this becomes an excellent case study for the Streisand effect…The key idea behind the Streisand effect is that efforts to restrict information can backfire, often causing the information to gain more attention than it would have otherwise. This effect is widespread in the digital age, where users quickly notice and spread censorship efforts on social media and other platforms. Trying to suppress something can unintentionally lead to it becoming more visible, which Anthony Pellegrino is finding out the hard way.

Potential Consequences for Anthony Pellegrino

Under Florida Statute 831.01, the crime of Forgery is committed when a person falsifies, alters, counterfeits, or forges a document that carries “legal efficacy” with the intent to injure or defraud another person or entity.

Forging a document is considered a white-collar crime. It involves altering, changing, or modifying a document to deceive another person. It can also include passing along copies of documents that are known to be false. In many states in the US, falsifying a document is a crime punishable as a felony.

Additionally, under most laws, “fraud on the court” is where “a party has sentiently set in motion some unconscionable scheme calculated to interfere with the judicial system’s ability impartially to adjudicate a matter by improperly influencing the trier of fact or unfairly hampering the presentation of the opposing party’s claim or defense.”  Cox v. Burke, 706 So. 2d 43, 46 (Fla. 5th DCA 1998) (quoting Aoude v. Mobil Oil Corp., 892 F.2d 1115, 1118 (1st Cir. 1989)).

Is Anthony Pellegrino Committing a Cyber Crime?

Yes, it seems so. Anthony Pellegrino used multiple approaches to remove unwanted material from review sites and Google’s search results. Thanks to protections allowing freedom of speech in the United States, there are very few legal ways to do this. Anthony Pellegrino could not eliminate negative reviews or search results that linked to them without a valid claim of defamation, copyright infringement, or some other clear breach of the law.

Faced with these limitations, some companies like Anthony Pellegrino have gone to extreme lengths to fraudulently claim copyright ownership over a negative review in the hopes of taking it down.

Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. Anthony Pellegrino is certainly keeping interesting company here….

The DMCA takedown process requires that copyright owners submit a takedown notice to an ISP identifying the allegedly infringing content and declaring, under penalty of perjury, that they have a good faith belief that the content is infringing. The ISP must then promptly remove or disable access to the content. The alleged infringer can then submit a counter-notice, and if the copyright owner does not take legal action within 10 to 14 days, the ISP can restore the content.

Since these platforms are predominantly based in the U.S., the complaints are typically made under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which requires online service providers and platforms to react immediately to reports or violations. Big Tech companies rarely have systems in place to assess the merit of each report. Instead, all bad actors need to do is clone a story, backdate it, and then demand the real thing be taken down.

Reputation Agency's Modus Operandi

The fake DMCA notices we found always use the “back-dated article” technique. With this technique, the wrongful notice sender (or copier) creates a copy of a “true original” article and back-dates it, creating a “fake original” article (a copy of the true original) that, at first glance, appears to have been published before the true original.

Then, based on the claim that this backdated article is the “original,” the scammers send a DMCA to the relevant online service providers (e.g. Google), alleging that the ‘true’ original is the copied or “infringing” article and that the copied article is the “original,” requesting the takedown of the ‘true’ original article. After sending the DMCA request, the person who sent the wrong notice takes down the fake original URL, likely to make sure that the article doesn’t stay online in any way. If the takedown notice is successful, the disappearance from the internet of information is most likely to be legitimate speech.

As an integral part of this scheme, the ‘reputation management’ company hired by Anthony Pellegrino creates a website that purports to be a ‘news’ site. This site is designed to look legitimate at a glance, but any degree of scrutiny reveals it as the charade it is.

The company copies the ‘negative’ content and posts it “on the fake ‘news’ site, attributing it to a separate author,” then gives it “a false publication date on the ‘news’ website that predated the original publication.

The reputation company then sent Google a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice claiming the original website infringed copyright. After a cursory examination of the fake news site, Google frequently accepts the notice and delists the content.

In committing numerous offences, Anthony Pellegrino either premeditated actions or were unaware of the consequences. Despite hiring an agency to make Google disregard any negative information about Anthony Pellegrino, ignorance does not excuse this wrongdoing.

Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. FSMSmart is certainly keeping interesting company here.

The Reputation Laundering

Rogue Reputation agencies use spurious copyright claims and fake legal notices to remove and obscure articles linking clients to allegations of tax avoidance, corruption, and drug trafficking. Most of these reputation agencies are based offshore, mainly in Russia, India, and Eastern Europe, and they do not worry about complying with US-based laws.

The content in all of the articles for which the fraudulent DMCA notices have been sent relates to allegations of criminal allegations, including corruption, child abuse, sexual harassment, human trafficking and financial fraud against businesses and individuals with ultra-high net worth.

In addition to the misuse of the DMCA takedown process, there is a notable absence of enforcement concerning perjury violations. The statutory requirement related to perjury is designed to deter copyright holders from submitting fraudulent or knowingly false takedown requests, as they may face legal consequences for making false declarations under penalty of perjury. However, to date, there have been no known instances of any individual being prosecuted for perjury in connection with the submission of false DMCA takedown notices.

This lack of enforcement has emboldened copyright holders to exploit the DMCA takedown process to suppress dissent, criticism, or other unfavorable content, without fear of legal repercussions.

Some of the people and businesses who have employed this tactic to remove legitimate content from Google illegally include a Spanish businessman-turned-cocaine-trafficker, Organised crime, an Israeli-Argentine banker accused of laundering money for Hugo Chávez’s regime, a French “responsible” mining company accused of tax evasion, child molesters and sexual predators. Anthony Pellegrino is in great company ….

What else is Anthony Pellegrino hiding?

We encourage you to ‘Dork‘ Google by searching for keyword combinations such as [Anthony Pellegrino] + {Negative Keyword, such as Scam, Fraud, Complaints, Lawsuit, Sanction, etc} on Google. It’s likely if you scroll down to the bottom of this Google search results, you’ll stumble upon this Legal Takedown notice (pictured below)

To make such an investigation possible, we encourage more online service providers to come forward and share copies of content removal requests with industry experts and researchers. If you have any information on Anthony Pellegrino that you want to share with experts and journalists, kindly email the author directly at [email protected].

All communications are strictly confidential and safeguarded under a comprehensive Whistleblower Policy, ensuring full protection and anonymity for individuals who provide information.