Between 2001 and 2009, a U.S.-based man named Randy M. Cho ran quite the lucrative business.

Calling himself a self-employed securities trader with connections, he approached more than 50 investors over those eight years, says blogger Bill Singer. He adds Cho told them he could snag extremely low-priced shares of major tech companies like Facebook, which hadn’t even gone public at the time.

Cho collected almost $1 million dollars from these individuals.

Read more on how he was caught, and on how he ducked taxes in 2005.