A Long Island swindler dubbed "Little Bernie Madoff" blew piles of investor cash on swanky hotels, jewelry - and paying back victims of a previous fraud rap, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Con man Nicholas Cosmo, 37, also paid the expenses of a kiddie baseball team and splurged on limo rides while promising sky-high returns of more than 50% a year to working-class folks whoentrusted him with millions, authorities said.
"[Cosmo] operated a classic Ponzi scheme," said Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Benton Campbell.
"In these difficult economic times, it bears repeating that if an investment opportunity seems too good to be true ... it is probably not on the level."
"When you lie about what you're selling people, that's fraud," added Joseph Demarest of the FBI.
Cosmo was hit with mail fraud charges and ordered held without bail until a hearing tomorrow in the blossoming $350 million scam.
Here's a look at what Cosmo did with just some of his ill-gotten gains:
* National Tournament Baseball League in Seaford, L.I.: $300,000
* Restitution for past fraud: $212,000
* Jewelry, hotels and limo rides: $100,000-plus
*
Checks to wife: $95,000
Cosmo, who did prison time a decade ago for securities fraud, told up to 1,500 investors in his Long Island-based firm Agape World that he was making big bucks making short-term loans to companies.
Most of the victims were middle-class people who invested their life savings after hearing about the great returns from friends or acquaintances.
Just last week, Cosmo still insisted everything was on the up andup. "I will show them all," he e-mailed one investor as the feds closed in.
The feds say Cosmo lost up to $80 million on bad commodities bets.
The married father of three also paid $55 million to brokers, including four ex-convicts, a mailman and a heroin dealer he apparently met in prison.
The middlemen hustled up more business in a classic Ponzi scheme like the one run by disgraced Wall Street titan Madoff.
In a bizarre twist, CNBC reported that Cosmo owed tens of thousands of dollars in gambling debt to the Genovese crime family.
Mob stoolie Michael Durso, who helped put Vincent (Chin) Gigante behind bars, told the feds that he met Cosmo in the late 1990s to pressure him to pay off the debt, the network said.
Disgruntled investors flocked to an Agape World office in Queens looking for answers, but found nothing but shuttered doors.
Retiree Ricardo Sanchez said he invested his $62,000 life savings with Cosmo's firm. Now he doesn't know if he'll see a dime.
"I don't know what to do. I didn't sleep last night," said Sanchez, 50, of Flushing. "I was just asking, 'What happened? What happened?'"
Vivian Ochoa admitted she got nervous about her $20,000 investment with Agape after the company gave her the runaround when she tried to withdraw the cash.
The stay-at-home mother of an 18-month-old girl says she and many of her relatives invested cash with the company.
"I need my money back," said Ochoa, 27.
Meanwhile, lawmakers grilled top U.S. regulators on Capital Hill about their oversight of Madoff's scandal-plagued firm, suggesting they should have uncovered the massive fraud.
