Anyone keeping track of the swarming hive of lawsuits in state and federal courts buzzing around Brooklyn businessman Yechiel "Sam" Sprei and his associates over the last year and more likely asked themselves a single question:
"Where the fuck is law enforcement?"
After all, there were a lot of lawsuits, and the conduct they said that Sprei allegedly engaged in—inducing people to put millions of dollars into escrow accounts on the ironclad promise that cash would be safe and they could get it back easily, then just walking away with the money—isn't just a basis for a civil claim. It's a crime.
The question was at least partly answered Wednesday morning, when Sprei was arrested by federal agents alongside Edward Harold King, who, while a sitting State Supreme Court justice, had allegedly conspired with Sprei to steal investors' money out of an escrow account he was operating in violation of judicial rules.