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.
A federal judge released King on a $250,000 bond and Sprei on a $500,000 bond after appearing in court Wednesday afternoon to face wire fraud conspiracy charges, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. Defense attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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. Judicial records show he agreed to resign just weeks after the state commission on judicial conduct informed him that it was investigating multiple complaints against him.
The complaints accused King of participating in a scheme to defraud investors in real estate and business opportunities by improperly receiving and transferring escrow funds, violating rules that bar full-time judges from acting as fiduciaries, and identifying himself as an attorney even though full-time judges are not allowed to practice law, according to stipulation he signed as part of the judicial conduct case. The stipulation states that he denied the allegations against him.
Last June, TD Bank sued King to recover nearly $2 million the institution said he overdrafted from his account in February 2025 — the same time federal prosecutors said he made improper transactions with the investors’ money.
Sprei has faced a slew of lawsuits in state and federal court accusing him of similar schemes. A federal lawsuit filed last August alleges the developer convinced an investor to go in with him on a property on Staten Island in order to steal his deposit funds. In that case, as well, the investor was allegedly directed to deposit his money in King’s escrow account, according to the lawsuit.
Another lawsuit accuses Sprei of falsely leading investors to believe he was a successful businessman, then duping them into putting millions of dollars into an escrow account so he and others could steal their money.
“Sprei’s conduct in the instant matter fits his modus operandi of ensnaring potential investors into fraudulent schemes,” the lawsuit states, then lists nine other court cases allegedly involving similar conduct.
That lawsuit also refers to Frank Seddio — a prominent attorney, former Brooklyn Democratic party boss and current commissioner on the city Board of Elections — as “Sprei’s longtime co-conspirator.” Seddio is not accused of wrongdoing in the federal criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday.
This story was updated with additional details.
