Florida business executive pleads guilty in 'pump and dump' scheme targeting the elderly

A Florida business executive accused of defrauding millions of dollars from elderly and unsophisticated investors in a “pump and dump” scheme with a Plainview boiler room pleaded guilty Tuesday in Central Islip federal court to conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert ordered Christian Romandetti, 61, to return to court on Oct. 12 for sentencing. Romandetti faces up to five years in prison as well as a $250,000 fine. He also agreed to pay $1.866 million in restitution. 

“I did the investors wrong,” Romandetti told Seybert before pleading guilty. 

Romandetti, of Indialantic, Florida,  was the chief executive officer of First Choice Healthcare Solutions when he teamed up with Plainview-based boiler room Elite Stock Research and other defendants between May 2013 and June 2016 to defraud investors, federal prosecutors said. 

Romandetti and other defendants pumped up the price and volume of traded shares in Melbourne, Florida-based FCHS by using multiple accounts to purchase and sell the stock, according to prosecutors. 

The defendants hired Elite Stock Research to pressure vulnerable investors to purchase the stock. Romandetti and other defendants earned more than $3 million from the scheme, court papers said.  

Romandetti’s attorney, Fritz Scheller of Orlando, Florida, said his client “accepts the error of his ways.” 

“He is on the path to rehabilitation and this was a first and important step in that process,” Scheller said.

Romandetti’s associates, Mark Burnett of Roslyn and Jeffrey Miller of Bellmore, pleaded guilty in 2019 to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and are scheduled to be sentenced on June 14.

The case against another defendant, Frank Sarro of Palm Bay, Florida, remains pending. He is scheduled to appear in Seybert’s court via teleconference on July 29.

“Through deceptive means, the defendant cheated his investors, many of whom were elderly,” said Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. “With today’s guilty plea, Christian Romandetti Sr. is held responsible for orchestrating and profiting from a pump-and-dump scheme involving shares of his own healthcare services company.”