The DOJ says the the two bank fraud charges and the two false statements to a bank charges “each carry a maximum of 30 years in prison, not more than five years supervised release, and a $1,000,000 fine,” while the money laundering charges “carry a penalty of imprisonment of not more than ten years, not more than three years of supervised release, and a fine of not more than twice the amount of the criminally derived property involved in the transaction at issue.”.
According to the DOJ’s charges, after closing his initial fund, he partially funded his own capital commitment to a second fund by making false statements about his wealth to his bank while refinancing his home mortgage and while obtaining a $300,000 personal loan, some of which he poured in the fund.
The DOJ says that that instead, Rothenberg used most of it for purposes having nothing to do with that production company.
To wit, its complaint alleges that in July 2016, five months after defrauding that first investor, Rothenberg “engaged in a scheme to defraud as many as five separate investors when he induced them to wire a total of $1.35 million under the premise of investing in the untraded stock of a privately-held software company.” The complaint charges Rothenberg with “knowingly engaging in a scheme to defraud one investor by representing to that organization that its money would be used to purchase the software company’s shares.
According to the complaint, on the same day the money was wired, Rothenberg took the money from the bank account designed to make the investment and sent it to RVMC’s main operating bank account, from which it was used for many purposes.”.
Rothenberg had entered the venture scene with a splash, landing a feature story in TechCrunch, in early 2013, and touting his connections and his youth — he was 27 at the time — as advantages he enjoyed over older VCs who might not have a shot at the same companies
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