DeWine
CLEVELAND (Legal Newsline) - Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine filed a lawsuit on Friday against a Cleveland-area resident who allegedly ran an international online investment operation that took hundreds of thousands of dollars and failed to deliver.
Steven Sigman, doing business as Company Express, allegedly engaged in multiple violations of the state's Consumer Sales Practices Act. Sigman operated the company out of Mayfield Heights and ran other websites offering multiple income stream generators and Internet marketing plans, DeWine says.
Consumers paid monthly fees or made advance deposits to Sigman's business to receive interest compounded daily at 0.5 percent to 1.25 percent. Sigman's business allegedly failed to fulfill its guarantees and shut down without giving advance notice to consumers.
"This individual has been operating websites promising guaranteed returns on investments, taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from consumers out of the country, and providing nothing in return," DeWine said. "Failure to deliver is the same concept in any country - it is a consumer rip off and the perpetrators need to be held accountable."
DeWine's office received more than 170 complaints against Company Express since December. Besides one complainant from Italy, the rest of the consumers reside in Hungary.
DeWine's lawsuit alleges that Sigman, doing business as Company Express, violated the state's Consumer Sales Practices Act by failing to perform services and failing to deliver. DeWine's lawsuit seeks consumer restitution, civil penalties and injunctive relief.