Two men arrested in $4 million Ponzi scheme

The FBI has arrested a Carol Stream man in connection with a two-person Ponzi scheme that defrauded more than 100 investors out of about $4 million over the past 3 1/2 years.

FBI Special Agent Ross Rice said in a news release that Daniel J. Parrilli, 59, of the 500 block of Yardley Drive, turned himself in Monday in Chicago. He was charged with one count of wire fraud and, if convicted, could face up to 20 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine.

His arrest comes three days after officials arrested his partner in the alleged scam, Christopher R. Andersen, 54, of Westmont.

The FBI says the two men told potential investors their Westmont-based company, Sundown, Inc., bought and sold films, comic books and intellectual property rights. They promised returns of between 25 percent and 100 percent above investment, sometimes within seven days, according to the complaint.

Instead, investors ended up losing up to 90 percent of their funds, the FBI said.

Organizers of a Ponzi scheme generally use money from investors to pay back previous debts, often at a lower amount than promised. One investor loaned the men $75,000 and received only $7,650 back.

Andersen and Parrilli promised the woman a return of 35 percent interest in 19 days.

According to the complaint, when she confronted the two men about her money she was told it had been sent to the Caribbean and was tied up because of the Patriot Act. The men allegedly continued the fraud by telling her Sundown would provide a full backing of the investment.

Another investor collected a total of $669,710 from family and friends and invested it with the men in June 2008. Andersen had told the investor the money would help pay inheritance taxes in South Africa to allow Sundown to buy from an estate in that country.

Instead, that money was used to pay back previous investors and some of it was wired to China.

While these rounds of scams allegedly began in 2006, the two men have a history of fraud, authorities said. The pair met in 2001 while serving separate prison terms for unrelated scams at Oxford Federal Prison in Oxford, Wis.