Rey E. Grabato II was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted Fraudsters list in a Ponzi scheme tied to more than $650 million. The case centers on about 2,000 investors who prosecutors say were drawn in through false promises and money from new investors.
The federal wanted-list move puts fresh pressure on a defendant already charged in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey in Newark. For investors, it sharpens the odds of recovery around a case prosecutors say ran on cash coming in from later buyers rather than real profits.
NRIA and $650 million
About 2,000 investors were drawn into the case between February 2018 and January 2022, including hundreds in New Jersey. Prosecutors say Grabato and Thomas Nicholas Salzano used false and misleading representations to persuade people to invest in the NRIA Partners Portfolio Fund I LLC, while the operation generated little to no profit.
$650 million is the size prosecutors attach to the scheme, and they say the business model depended on new investor money to keep moving. That structure meant earlier payments could be covered without a genuine operating return, while millions of dollars in investor funds were allegedly misappropriated.
FBI and Grabato’s location
Grabato was the former president and majority owner of National Realty Investment Advisors LLC, or NRIA. The FBI says he has ties to the Philippines and may be living there, even as he remains wanted on federal securities and wire fraud charges and on a conspiracy count tied to taxes.
Oct. 12, 2022 is the date a federal arrest warrant was issued for Grabato, and Salzano was arrested in October 2022. The indictment identified Grabato as being from Hoboken, New Jersey, and the Philippines, and he has also used the names Rey Encarnacion Grabato II, Rey Grabato II and Rey Li Encarnacion Grabato.
$150,000 and the tax case
$150,000 is the reward now offered for information leading to Grabato’s arrest and conviction. That offer gives the case a practical edge: anyone with information can help move a fugitive fraud prosecution forward, not just a paper charge sheet.
The tax allegation runs alongside the investor fraud but covers a different span. The FBI says the separate scheme to obstruct the Internal Revenue Service’s efforts to collect about $26 million in outstanding tax liabilities ran from November 2007 to August 2022, a longer period that extends well beyond the investor conduct prosecutors place between February 2018 and January 2022.
For anyone who invested in NRIA, the immediate facts now sit in one place: a named fugitive, a $650 million Ponzi scheme, about 2,000 investors, and a federal reward attached to an arrest. Where Grabato is now, and whether any country has moved to locate him, remains the unresolved thread at the center of the case.
