Timothy Kroll.
A Manhattan federal judge slapped real estate swindler Timothy Kroll with a two-year jail sentence for ripping off clients to the tune of $17 million.
U.S. Southern District Judge Jesse M. Furman on Oct. 10 also ordered Kroll, 46, of Solebury Township, to pay $17 million in restitution, forfeit another $6.4 million, and serve three years of probation.
Kroll and partner Carlton Cabot tricked real estate investors by using over $17 million as a personal slush fund, then covering it up with manipulated financial statements.
Kroll and Cabot were arrested at their homes in June 2015 and charged with seven counts, including wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering. In 2016, Cabot was sentenced to 10 years in jail by Judge Furman.
Kroll has been free on $1 million bail, and confirmed in a 2016 interview that he owns The Local bar on River Road in Point Pleasant, which he purchased in 2014, formerly the Apple Jack. An employee reached by phone at the Local initially said the bar would remain open, then hung up abruptly when questioned about current ownership.
The Local in Point Pleasant.
Kroll pleaded guilty to all seven counts against him on Oct. 7, 2015, according to court records. Judge Furman last Tuesday sentenced him to 24 months on each count, to be served concurrently.
Kroll had served as chief operating officer of Cabot Investment Properties (CIP), while Cabot, 52, of Stamford, claimed the title of CEO. All told, public records show that CIP pulled in at least $240 million from hundreds of investors.
Among other charges, New York prosecutors said that Kroll spent $50,000 of investor funds on a New York City apartment, $40,000 on a credit card, and more than $22,000 toward a BMW automobile.
In an unrelated incident, Solebury police on Oct. 19, 2015, responded to a barn fire at Kroll’s five-bedroom residence at 6581 Saw Mill Road. Two Icelandic show horses perished in the blaze, along with some chickens, and the cause of the fire is still “undetermined,” according to a county fire official.
Barn fire. (Photo: Solebury Police Department)
The original complaint against the two real estate hucksters filed in the Southern District of New York states, “From 2003 through 2012, CIP – which was controlled by Cabot and Kroll – sponsored and oversaw approximately 18 so-called tenants-in-common (TIC) securities offerings to investors located all over the United States.” TICs are a type of a real estate investment in which investors collectively own a piece of commercial real estate, and are entitled to receive a portion of the rental income from the property.
From 2008 through 2012, say prosecutors, “Cabot and Kroll engaged in a scheme to defraud the TIC Investors by misappropriating funds belonging to the TIC Investments, and concealing their misappropriations by providing false and misleading financial reports and other information to the TIC Investors.
According to the prospectuses for the TIC Investments, CIP was only allowed to collect “excess” rental income from the TIC Investments, but Cabot and Kroll repeatedly transferred money out of bank accounts belonging to the TIC Investments and into CIP bank accounts that they controlled before the TIC Investments could use the funds to pay for operating expenses and disbursements to the TIC Investors. Cabot and Kroll, say investigators, then used these funds to pay for the following three unauthorized purposes, without the knowledge or authorization of the TIC Investors:
1) Cabot and Kroll caused millions of dollars to be transferred from the CIP Operating Accounts to the bank accounts of TIC Investments that had no available funds to cover their operating expenses and investor distributions. That’s how Cabot and Kroll were able to perpetuate the fraud scheme by propping up failing TIC Investments using funds belonging to other TIC Investments.
2) The duo used the funds in the CIP Operating Accounts belonging to the TIC Investments to pay for millions of dollars of personal expenses, including expensive cars, rental apartments, and private school tuition.
3) Cabot and Kroll also used the funds in the CIP Operating Accounts belonging to the TIC Investments to pay for CIP business expenses, including an approximately $1.1M civil settlement to certain TIC Investors who had sued Cabor, Kroll, CIP, and a CIP sibsidiary.
To conceal their misappropriation of TIC Investment funds from the TIC Investors, say prosecutors, Cabot and Kroll provided false and misleading financial reports to the TIC Investors that intentionally hid the fact that CIP owed large sums of money to the TIC Investments. Kroll also gave false and misleading information to the TIC Investors about how the TIC Investment funds were managed in order to prevent the TIC Investors from learning the true financial status of their investment.
By the end of 2012, when CIP ceased its day-to-day operations, CIP and principals Cabot and Kroll owed approximately $17 million to the TIC Investments, which has never been repaid.
Who cares about the name of the bar. The owner should have gotten many more years behind bars. He’s lived the life of luxury on other peoples’ dimes. Send him to the wolves!!
Sounds like it was a ponzi scheme similar to Bernie Madoff…jail is jail and prison is prison…a term of 10 years will be served in a prison not a jail. How many more haven’t gotten caught?
My family owned the bar since 1970. Apple Jack is a name I do not want passed on to the new establishment. Apple Jack was over the day we sold it, which was January 2, 2015. My father, Dale and mother, Cynthia started this establishment and when it changed hands the Apple Jack era was and is over!! Please call it The Local. My family would appreciate it. Thank you
That’s beautiful dude. A classic curmudgeonly response befitting the ex-owner of AJ…so you know he’s real! Sorry friend but you don’t get to decide that. It will always be Apple Jack.
I can only hope that this does not portend the end of the glorious institution that is Apple Jacks (no, I won’t call it the Local). We can only hope for a White Knight similar to the one that saved John and Peters. I’m afraid however the more likely endgame here will be the ultimate demise of AJ’s, which will be an American tragedy. I’ll only take solace in thoughts of a reunion of the ghosts of Abbie Hoffman and scores of long dead bikers drinking cheap beer at a cobwebbed basement bar behind boarded up doors and windows.