Peter Wolofsky, 84, has been accused of ripping people for the past three decades.
In the 1980s, Peter Wolofsky was a developer of high-rise condos in Hallandale Beach -- and was sued by numerous angry owners who complained of bad construction.
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Then Wolofsky took over the Auto Toy Store on Sunrise Boulevard, a place that sold exotic high-end cars to the rich and famous. Again, lawsuits followed him and in 2008, at the age of 81, he was hit with federal money laundering felony charges related to the Toy Store Yacht Group, a subsidiary of the car dealership. Wolofsky pleaded guilty but escaped prison time in part because he claimed serious health problems.
Wolofsky may have been ailing, but the feds claim it didn't stop his criminal activity. Last week, he was charged with money laundering in a $40 million fortune telling scam that allegedly involved a $20 million fraud committed on a best-selling romance novelist named Jude Deveraux.
The new indictment mentions Wolfosky's past at the Auto Toy Store and calls him a "financial backer for home loans, luxury vehicles, and luxury boats."
"Much of the money obtained by [the fortune tellers] was hidden and laundered through Defendant Peter Wolofsky's many businesses and bank accounts," prosecutors wrote in the indictment.
This is the second high-profile Toy Store-related arrest this year. In January, Wolofsky's former manager at the Toy Store, Steven Goldstrom, was charged with perjury in a state corruption case. Goldstrom allegedly arranged to give former Fort Lauderdale Commissioner Cindi Hutchinson thousands of dollars in household work in exchange for her votes for another of his employers, developer Glenn Wright. Hutchinson awaits trial on official misconduct, theft, and unlawful compensation charges.
The fortune telling case involves an alleged gang of Romany gypsies who the feds say convinced desperate people to hand over their cursed money to them. Instead of giving it back, as promised, they kept it, according to prosecutors. Charged in the case are Rose Marks, Nancy Marks, Cynthia Miller, Rosie Marks, Victoria Eli, Vivian Marks, Ricky Marks, Michael Marks, Donnie Eli, and the previously aforementioned Wolofsky. It's not believed that Wolofsky is himself a member of a gypsy family.
The circumstances involving author Deveraux -- whose real name is Jude Gilliam Montassir and who is the author of 37 best-selling romance novels -- are particularly sad: She turned to the fortune tellers in an attempt to deal with the loss of her 8-year-old adopted son Sam, who died in a motorcycle accident in North Carolina in 2005. Property records show she purchased a home on a sprawling property in Southwest Ranches for a little under a million dollars in 2009.
I called a phone number lined to Wolofsky in Boca Raton and reached a woman who said he was unavailable before hanging up the phone. For more about Wolofsky read this this and this.