DETROIT – A 55-year-old former resident of Macomb County was sentenced yesterday to over 11 years in federal prison for defrauding seventeen people of over $4 million in an investment fraud scheme, United States Attorney Dawn N. Ison announced.
Joining in the announcement was James A. Tarasca, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Detroit Division.
U.S. District Judge Laurie J. Michelson sentenced Gino Accettola to 135 months in prison following his April 2022 guilty plea to wire fraud charges and ordered that Accettola pay restitution to his seventeen victims in the amount of $4,199,846.35.
According to court records, from 2014 to 2016, Accettola solicited investments from associates and friends of friends. Accettola offered investors abnormally high short-term returns. Accettola told investors that the money they invested with him was in support of various commercial construction projects in Michigan and Florida. Many of the commercial construction projects that Accettola described to investors did not exist. Specifically, Accettola solicited investments in support of purported work for a Michigan based manufacturing facility and claimed to be friends with the managing partner of the company. In reality, Accettola had no connection to company nor was he friends with the managing partner. In order to perpetuate his fraud, Accettola provided investors with fraudulent emails, contracts, payout schedules and other information purportedly…
