A Long Island man must spend the next 4½ years in prison for scamming investors out of $3.5 million through what he claimed was a revolutionary new aspirin, federal authorities in New Jersey said.
Donald A. Milne III, a 57-year-old repeat offender from Massapequa, defrauded more than 70 victims from throughout the country, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said.
All thought they’d invested in what he touted as a “fast-acting form of powdered aspirin that could instantly stop heart attacks and strokes,” Sellinger said.
Milne used the money instead for a Caribbean vacation, boating expenses, divorce payments, clothing, and spa treatments — and to sustain and operate Island Raceway & Hobby Inc., a now-defunct remote-controlled toy race car business in Lindenhurst, the U.S. attorney said.
A much smaller portion of the money went toward paying other investors in a “Ponzi-scheme fashion,” he said.
Milne told the investors this time that their money was being used to cover “normal day-to-day operating expenses” of a company that he called Instaprin Pharmaceuticals, as well as “the costs involved in developing and commercializing its products,” Sellinger said.
It wasn’t, he said.
Milne – who’d pleaded guilty to investment fraud charges in a previous case more than 20 years ago — also lied when he told the victims that he’d assembled a “very strong world-renowned board of directors and medical advisory board” that included…
