Fake Facebook Stock Sold By Oshkosh Woman, Amidst IPO Filing

An Oshkosh Wisconsin woman is in some scalding hot water recently for taking advantage of Facebook’s recent public stock offering. Marianne Oleson has been charged with 33 felony charges in the ...
Fake Facebook Stock Sold By Oshkosh Woman, Amidst IPO Filing
Written by

An Oshkosh Wisconsin woman is in some scalding hot water recently for taking advantage of Facebook’s recent public stock offering.

Marianne Oleson has been charged with 33 felony charges in the Winnebago County Court. The prosecutors say the woman claimed to own shares of Facebook stock and swindled at least 4 people in to buying the fake stock. One complaint states that one man gave Oleson 28,000 dollars in cash money in exchange for “legitimate looking” documents.

Officials say Oleson acquired the documents from a Florida company that owns private stock of the social network giant by telling the company she was interested in buying 1 million dollars worth of shares.

Oleson has many aliases including the last names of Jansen, Milock and Maloney. Randy Stafford, the aforementioned man that was swindled says he was indeed “swindled”. Stafford performed construction on Oleson’s home and after she couldn’t afford to pay him, she offered him the stock in exchange; Stafford said:

“I think it’s a great opportunity, it’s a growing business so on and so forth.”

Reportedly, 18,00 dollars was in payment for work he did on the home and stafford payed an additional 10,000 dollars for the stocks themselves. Stafford went on to say:

“I’m interested in my options and investments so you don’t have to work as hard and make it a lot easier money for my kids and family.”

Stafford went on to say that “something didn’t feel right”; seems his instincts were correct; according to the victim, Oleson had bought up to 1 million dollars worth of the faux stock.

Police officials say that stafford wasn’t the only one duped. Jeff Bellin of the Winnebago County Sheriff’s office says:

“There were other victims initially identified and from there, it just grew.”

A criminal complaint lists 5 victims including Stafford that purchased or had the fake stock given to them as a gift. Bellin feels that there may be more victims out there too. To add insult to injury, Oleson is facing marijuana possession charges on top of her previous charges.

Get the WebProNews newsletter delivered to your inbox

Get the free daily newsletter read by decision makers

Subscribe
Advertise with Us

Ready to get started?

Get our media kit

Advertise with Us