No Trading for Striar : Flimflam Man in Prison, but Injunction Ensures It

A federal judge issued a permanent injunction Monday against convicted flimflam man Bernard Striar, prohibiting him from trading in commodities.

U.S. District Judge Judith Keep issued the injunction at the request of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which had filed a civil suit against Striar after the collapse of his fraud-ridden D&B; Investments and Doncomm Financial in La Mesa in early 1984.

Striar, whose nationwide trail of investment fraud schemes spanned nearly four decades and a handful of false identities, had earlier consented to the injunction, according to his attorney, Flora Lynne Einesman.

Included in the injunction is Barbara Daskoski, a former employee of Striar’s and a general partner of Doncomm Financial.

The trading commission’s lawsuit alleged that Striar filed false and misleading account statements and that he claimed fraudulently that his commodity investment firms had generated profits for his clients.

Striar’s firms defrauded about $6.5 million from hundreds of clients between 1980 and 1984. Striar disappeared in March, 1984, after a routine audit by the National Futures Assn. uncovered his scam.

Striar, 61, was sentenced by Keep in September to 10 years in federal prison and ordered to repay about $2 million to his defrauded investors. He had pleaded guilty in June to two counts of mail fraud and two counts of fraud by a commodity pool operator following his indictment earlier on 120 counts of fraud.

Striar’s bankrupt firms have recovered about $400,000 in cash. Between $300,000 and $400,000 worth of real estate is now for sale on the open market, according to Norbert J. Nowicki, receiver for the bankrupt companies.

Nowicki would not estimate how much money investors may eventually recover. However, he said the bankruptcy case could be completed by year’s end.

Although a future in commodity trading doesn’t appear likely for Striar, now in federal prison in Rochester, Minn., the trading commission nonetheless sought a permanent injunction against him as an example of the agency’s desire to crack down on Ponzi-type schemes, according to Jane Catherine Malich, the trading commission’s attorney.