PALOMA SENTENCED TO 10 YEARS

In an incredible case of art imitating life, after playing the part of a mobster who stole millions in the recently released, award-winning feature film “Forget About It”, Michael Paloma pleaded guilty to multimillion dollar stock fraud in a scheme involving the Bonanno crime family, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $7.8 million dollars in restitution.

On March 14, 2008 federal Judge Leonie Brinkema in the U.S. Eastern District of Virginia sentenced Arizona organized crime figure Michael Paloma aka Michael Ralph Saquella aka Michael Blake (Case Number 1:07 CR305-001) to ten years imprisonment. Paloma was ordered to pay $7.8 million dollars dollars in restitution. According to the filings by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Paloma and his co-conspirators, including prominent mobsters, bilked as many as 25,000 penny stock investors of up to $50 million dollars.

This story has it all: an Elvis impersonator who claimed to be a Samurai competing in Jiu-Jitsu matches, alleged that he was “seeing dead people”, recorded his own Blues album, was involved with the mob, stole millions in sophisticated stock schemes and ended up in prison. In a shocking twist to an already elaborate plot, Paloma was also an actor who played the part of a mobster that stole millions and ended up in prison.

Paloma’s conviction was brought on not only by his greed, but largely by his vanity. One of the 15 companies victimized by Paloma, Beverly Hills Film Studios, produced an award-winning feature film “Forget About It”, starring Burt Reynolds, Raquel Welch, Charles Durning, Robert Loggia, Phyllis Diller and Richard Grieco. Michael Paloma insisted on co-starring in the film by fraudulently representing to the film executives that production funds were to come from Paloma’s “private investment group”. Unbeknownst to the company’s former President, BJ Davis, in reality the funds came from Paloma’s unlawful exploitation of the company’s own stock.

Recently unsealed documents filed by the government in their cases against Paloma (whose real name is Michael Ralph Saquella) state in relevant part: “The stock manipulation schemes employed by SAQUELLA and other co-conspirators...followed a similar pattern...In most instances, the Issuer was a small privately-held company that needed to raise money. SAQUELLA would offer to help the particular Issuer raise significant funds through the sale of that Issuer’s stock...or by conducting a reverse merger of the Issuer into a dormant, but publicly trading shell company.”