Colorful Las Vegas entrepreneur Jed Baron has been arrested on charges related to an alleged sham seafood deal victimizing a casino executive to the tune of $1.69 million, according to court records.
Newly unsealed records show Baron was indicted in Sacramento on May 17 on five counts of wire fraud.
The alleged victim, former Fitzgeralds Reno casino owner Preston Smart of Truckee, Calif., said in a Las Vegas lawsuit that Baron stole $4.37 million from him and his companies through various scams involving investments in luxury car and seafood deals as well as a proposed mobster movie called “Johnny Handsome” that would have starred George Clooney.
Smart won his lawsuit in 2008 when a judge granted him and his companies a $13.1 million judgment against Baron and his companies. That sum included triple damages under the federal racketeering law.
The new criminal indictment focuses on a 2007 seafood investment in which prosecutors allege Baron falsely told Smart, the investor, that his money would be used for Baron’s company ItalVegas to buy organically raised seafood in Ireland and then resell it to restaurants and stores in Las Vegas at a profit.
There was no seafood deal, the indictment says, adding Baron even strung along the victim with an email saying, “The boat docks tomorrow!!! Fish on the way.”
But instead of using Smart’s money to buy and resell seafood, “Baron diverted the money for his own personal use and/or to repay his own obligations,” the indictment says.
Court records show Baron appeared in federal court in Las Vegas on Monday on the new charges and was ordered jailed until a detention hearing Friday.
A request for comment was placed with his attorney, Michael Cristalli.
Baron gained attention in Las Vegas in the early 2000s with his ItalVegas food importation company and as a producer who headed Jag Productions. He was credited with films including “Narc,” “Heaven’s Pond” and “U-Boat.”
But in 2005, he pleaded guilty in federal court in Long Island, N.Y., to wire fraud in a scheme in which he defrauded investors in an Alec Baldwin movie called “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” Baron was sentenced in 2007 to one year in prison and ordered to pay $230,000 in restitution.
The new criminal charges unsealed this week aren’t the only legal problems facing Baron.
Records show prosecutors in December sought to revoke his supervised release status from the New York federal case after he was accused of grand theft in Beverly Hills, Calif., in incidents in which he was accused of taking $400,000 in diamond jewelry pieces and then failing to return them.
Court records say he “entered a contractual agreement with several jewelry companies wherein, he agreed to return the merchandise within five days should he not wish to purchase the merchandise.”
“Following numerous attempts by the victims to collect the property, the victims filed a police report with Beverly Hills Police Department” and the Los Angeles County District Attorney then filed the grand theft charge against Baron, the records show.