A man from Orange County has been found guilty of soliciting investors for a bogus COVID-19 cure.
The US Department of Justice says 56-year-old Keith Lawrence Middlebrook of Huntington Beach was convicted of 11 counts of wire fraud. He remains free on $150,000 bond.
Authorities say Middlebrook began posting fake advertisements on social media sites, and reaching out to investors from California, Nevada, New York, Colorado, and Texas via text message in March of 2020 about an opportunity to make money through his purported COVID-19 cure.
Middlebrook, who was also a part-time actor, called his pretend cure for the virus “QC20”, and he came up with a fake treatment that he labeled “QP20.”
The DOJ says the 56-year-old claimed that he had a patent pending for the cure, and would lie to potential investors about many things, including that Los Angeles Lakers legend Magic Johnson was a director with his company.
Middlebrook would promise his victims enormous returns and even told them that an interested party from Dubai would pay him $10 billion for his company.
The FBI arrested Middlebrook in 2020, after an undercover sting where he delivered his fake COVID-19 cure pills to an undercover agent who was pretending to be an interested investor.
Middlebrook is facing up to 20 years in federal prison for each wire fraud account.