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A former Brooklyn judge and a real estate developer scammed would-be investors into giving them millions of dollars on false promises, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York alleged in a complaint unsealed Wednesday.
Prosecutors said Edward Harold King, who served as a Supreme Court justice in Brooklyn, and developer Sam Sprei told investors they could get their money back at any time, but later refused to return most of the funds, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. In the meantime, Sprei transferred millions of dollars into his own bank account, prosecutors said.
King and Sprei are expected to appear in court Wednesday afternoon on wire fraud conspiracy charges. Attorney information was not immediately available.
King and Sprei’s alleged scheme started in the fall of 2024, when Sprei presented two investors with an opportunity to buy commercial real estate in Freehold, New Jersey, through a bankruptcy court auction, according to the complaint.
In subsequent phone calls and electronic communications, Sprei allegedly told the investors they would need to prove they had the necessary funds by depositing money into an escrow account.
Sprei said the money would be overseen by a reputable third party and that the funds would not be used for any other purpose without the investors’ authorization, prosecutors said. Based on that information, the investors wired $6.5 million into an account under King’s name, according to the complaint.
The investors and King, then a sitting judge, signed an agreement that promised the investors could request their money back at any point and receive it within two business days, the complaint alleges. Prosecutors said Sprei told the investors that King was a judge.
Shortly after receiving the money, King withdrew more than $3 million from the account and wired hundreds of thousands of dollars more into an account with Sprei’s name on it, according to bank records cited in the complaint. Prosecutors said neither King nor Sprei informed investors about these transactions or sought their permission.
Prosecutors said a notice was published in a national newspaper about a public auction for the property in question, but that it did not identify King as the escrow agent and that it only required a $250,000 deposit — much lower than the $6.5 million investors were required to turn over.
The investors asked King to return their deposited funds in April 2025, according to the complaint. He did not turn over the funds within two days as promised, the complaint states. The following month, prosecutors said, the investors received two wire transfers totaling about $1.5 million — a fraction of their initial investment. Sprei and King never returned the rest of the funds, the complaint alleges.
King resigned from the bench last December, according to the complaint.
This is a developing story and may be updated.
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