Prosecutors: Industry’s Thriller Fraudster Spent Cash on Lavish Way of life

The suspect within the small enterprise finance trade’s lengthy working mysterious fraud was residing giant earlier than being arrested in Spain and extradited to the United States. Saul Shalev has been charged with wire fraud, cash laundering, and aggravated id theft for stealing the identities of retailers, establishing faux mortgage brokerages, and tricking enterprise house owners and funders into funding his private financial institution accounts. When the American authorities lastly caught up with him, he had been residing in Dubai however vacationing on the Hotel Nobu Barcelona inside a rustic with an extradition treaty with the United States. That’s the place they received him and his laptop computer with all of the proof.

According to the US Attorney, Shalev rented a Dubai residence for $18,000/month, was photographed with a $250,000 McLaren 650S, rented yachts, and paid for chauffeured limousines in Paris. Shalev is at the moment 36 years outdated. He had been a fugitive from justice even earlier than these fees. He fled the US in 2019 with three pending warrants towards him in New Jersey and New York. His fraud scheme towards the trade was carried out from overseas.

His alleged faux ISOs embody the names Silver Oak Capital Funding, LEM Enterprises, and SpBiz. Authorities obtained a spreadsheet of 27 funders he had compiled on his laptop that famous which of them he had already signed up with or “used and abused.”

Shalev is claimed to have decided which retailers had small enterprise loans and the approximate date during which the loans had been obtained by means of fundamental public UCC submitting knowledge. That was sufficient to contact these retailers and fake to be their lender of report and provoke step one of every rip-off.

In complete, prosecutors consider Shalev fraudulently obtained over $4 million from retailers and funders.

Shalev has made a request to be moved from jail to house detention. Prosecutors have argued, nonetheless, that he’s a traditional case of an imminent flight danger as a result of his dramatic abroad seize was a results of him having fled the regulation already

“If Shalev is released and flees the country again, it is very unlikely that the many small business owners and employees who suffered as a result of his criminal conduct will ever see justice,” they wrote.

Last modified: February 27, 2026