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BANGKOK (AP) - Two Canadians accused of scamming more than $140 million from investors worldwide in a penny stock fraud have been arrested in Thailand, police said Wednesday.
Gregory Curry, 63-year-old native of Sydney, Canada, was arrested Tuesday at his ex-wife's house in Kabin Buri district in the eastern province of Prachin Buri, said Lt. Col. Kanaphat Phahumunto.
"Curry has been living in Thailand for 14 years. His Thai wife told police he paid her 20,000 baht ($630) to find a place for him to hide and we found him on Tuesday morning at his ex-wife's residence," Kanaphat told The Associated Press.
Prachin Buri is 90 kilometers (60 miles) east of Bangkok.
He said the suspected mastermind, 55-year-old Sandy Winick, was apprehended by Thai Special Branch police on Saturday.
The pair is among nine men the FBI suspects of augmenting the share price of worthless stocks of small companies and unloading them to unsuspecting investors from about 35 countries. Seven of them were arrested in the U.S. and Canada on Aug. 13, according to the FBI.
"(Winick and Curry) thought that they could simply run away from their crimes. Today, with the help of our friends in Thai law enforcement, we once again showed that fraudsters cannot hide from the law," U.S. Attorney Loretta E. Lynch in a statement issued Tuesday.
In the same statement, the FBI called the scam "one of the largest international penny stock frauds and advance fee schemes in the history."
Kanaphat said Winick was arrested in 2011 in Bangkok for a call center scam but escaped bail.
Both men face extradition to the U.S. on an indictment in a New York court.
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