Booms attract crooks, they always have and always will. When a boom deflates though, the vermin usually are exposed for what they are and their scams unravel. Such is the case of Aleem Hussain, a Guyana native who ran the real estate scam Main Street USA that defrauded investors out of 9 million dollars in Florida.

Now Hussain is facing 7 years in jail and deportation back to his native Guyana. When booms happen people get greedy. And it is not only the scam artists who get greedy but the investors. When someone is promising 30 percent returns odds are you need to do a great deal of due diligence on the investment. But the scam artist will recognize the greed in the eye of the novice investor and strip them clean.

What is amazing in this case is Hussain stayed around. Usually guys who run the Ponzi schemes get the money and when the scam unravels are long gone. But then greed is a dangerous drug and odds are Hussain started to believe he was an investment guru even as his scam was unraveling.

Well, the good thing is that he will have time to understand what he did to his investors while sitting in jail.

But to the government, Hussain hatched a Ponzi scheme and was a fraud from the beginning, gunning for investors’ money as a way to fund his other projects. “This is no mistake by an honest man,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Cynthia Hawkins said.
Hussain, 43, was sentenced to seven years in prison for swindling nearly $9 million from investors, including retirees, state court workers and sheriff’s employees. When he’s done serving his time, Hussain — a Guyana native — is expected to be deported. “I’m pretty happy with that,” said Mark Pilkington, who lost $300,000 when he invested with Hussain’s Main Street USA Inc. “Now we’re all just waiting to see what kind of assets will be recovered.” via OrlandoSentinel.com

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