Syracuse, NY — Glen Zinszer of Liverpool, New York, pled guilty today to committing wire fraud and willfully filing false tax returns, announced Acting United States Attorney Antoinette T. Bacon; Thomas Fattorusso, Acting Special Agent in Charge, New York Field Office, Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation ("IRS-CI"); and Jodi Cohen, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Albany Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
As part of his guilty plea, Zinszer admitted that he began operating the Brazzlebox company in 2012, which he represented to investors would be like a Facebook for business. Beginning in April 2013 and continuing until approximately the summer of 2016, Zinszer made false representations to investors about how Brazzlebox was doing to cause them to invest more money and remain invested. In pleading guilty, Zinszer admitted that he inflated Brazzlebox's user numbers and told employees to create fictitious user accounts to inflate those figures, misrepresented purportedly revenue-generating strategic partnerships, forged documents to support those falsehoods, and forged a letter of intent to purchase Brazzlebox for millions of dollars.