Cohen is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of wire fraud, according to federal prosecutors. Each count carries up to a 20-year prison sentence. He is also facing investment advisor fraud charges, which carry a maximum five-year prison sentence. Three others, including former NBA players agent Charles Briscoe, were also charged.

In the indictment, which was unsealed on Thursday, the Justice Department alleged that Cohen and the others engaged in fraud schemes to transfer roughly $13 million from NBA clients for personal uses. The DOJ noted that $7 million of that was allegedly misappropriated only by Briscoe and Calvin Darden Jr., who has previously pleaded guilty to separate wire fraud charges.

The players weren’t named in the DOJ’s announcement. Their identities were confirmed by a person familiar with the matter, who declined to be identified given the sensitive nature of the case.

The DOJ claimed that Cohen and his alleged co-conspirators induced the three clients to purchase overpriced life insurance policies that Cohen later used to do renovations on his home and pool, as well as pay off his credit card bills and give money to a romantic partner.

Prosecutors also alleged that Cohen directed the basketball players to give donations to a nonprofit, which he ultimately used to build athletic facilities in his backyard.

“These defendants believed that defrauding their professional athlete clients of millions of dollars would be a layup. That was a huge mistake, and they now face serious criminal charges for their alleged crimes,” said Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in a Thursday announcement.

Cohen was an advisor for Morgan Stanley from 2015 to 2021, according to his Financial Industry Regulatory Authority profile. The DOJ said in its indictment document that the alleged fraud schemes took place from roughly 2017 to 2020. Morgan Stanley fired Cohen in 2021 for “transactions not disclosed to or approved by Morgan Stanley and use of an unapproved platform to engage in inappropriate communications with clients,” according to FINRA filings.

“We fully cooperated with the investigation and have resolved clients’ claims related to Mr. Cohen,” Morgan Stanley said in a statement. “Mr. Cohen was terminated from the Firm in March 2021 and has since been barred from the securities industry by FINRA.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission also charged Cohen on Thursday for allegedly defrauding Holiday, Parsons and Lee out of over $1 million.

Cohen’s lawyer, Brandon Reif, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The three basketball players had previously filed claims against Morgan Stanley with FINRA. Those cases were later settled. Phil Aidikoff, who represented Holiday, Parsons and Lee, declined to comment due to the confidentiality agreements in the FINRA settlements.

Correction: This story was updated to reflect that there were multiple alleged schemes resulting in a total $13 million of fraud.

CEO Angus Pacala told CNBC in an interview following the company’s fourth-quarter report that Ouster has already begun integrating Velodyne’s people and technology into its existing business, cutting about 200 employees from the post-merger business.

Ouster is on track to achieve about $50 million of the promised $75 million in annualized cost savings by the end of the first quarter, he said, based on the two companies’ standalone costs as of the third quarter of 2022.

For its fourth quarter, which reflects Ouster’s results before the merger with Velodyne was completed, the company reported a loss of 23 cents per share on revenue of $11 million. That’s compared with a loss per share of 17 cents on revenue of $11.9 million during the same period a year ago.

For the full year, Ouster reported $41 million in revenue with a 27% gross margin, in line with its previous guidance to investors. The company shipped over 8,600 lidar sensors in 2022 – but it reported a net loss of about $139 million, or 70 cents per share, for the full year.

Shares were down about 9% in after-market trading on Thursday.

Pacala said that he would encourage Ouster’s investors to look ahead.

“We also booked $70 million in business in 2022,” he said. “And I think that number alone is a very strong indication of how this business is going. We’re carrying a large amount of backlog into this year.”

Lidar, short for “light detection and ranging,” is a sensor technology that uses invisible infrared lasers to create a detailed 3D image of the sensor’s surroundings. Ouster’s lidar units and software are tailored for several industry verticals, including automotive applications, industrial machinery, robotics and “smart infrastructure,” in which sensors and data help to manage energy networks, public water-supply systems, and even traffic signals in urban settings.

Ouster shipped over 2,900 lidar sensors in the fourth quarter, up 23% from a year ago. But its gross margins, a measure of its progress toward profitability, fell to 17% in the fourth quarter from 30% in the year-ago period. Pacala said that discounts on some large-volume sales to existing customers hurt its gross margin during the period, as did spending to ramp up production of Ouster’s new REV7 sensor platform, which launched in October.

Pacala said that early customer feedback on the REV7 has been “incredibly positive” and that while the spending to launch the new platform hurt the company’s fourth-quarter results, he expects that it will pay dividends as 2023 unfolds.

As of year-end, Ouster and Velodyne had a combined cash balance of about $315 million. The combined company expects to generate $15 million to $17 million in revenue in the first quarter, not counting the revenue that Velodyne generated before the merger was completed on Feb. 10.

Ouster hasn’t yet said when it will release its first-quarter results.

Peter Coker Jr. “poses a serious risk of flight, and … there are no conditions or combination thereof that can assure his appearance at future proceedings,” said the letter by the U.S. Attorney’s Office to federal Magistrate Judge Edward Kiel.

In the same letter, prosecutors said Coker Jr. had “stood to make tens of millions of dollars” from a hoped-for reverse merger of the deli company, which the goal of the “complex, long-term fraud’ spanning at least seven years that grossly inflated its stock price.

“And the only reason that the Defendant and his co-conspirators were unable to achieve their ultimate objective of entering into a reverse merger, which would have allowed for a massive payout, was because of negative news articles that exposed their fraud,” the letter to Kiel said.

CNBC in 2021 published several dozen articles that exposed eyebrow-raising consulting agreements, troubled legal histories, and other issues related to people connected to the deli company.

In their own filing Thursday, Coker Jr.’s defense said the Hong Kong businessman relinquished American citizenship “primarily for economic reasons and in recognition of his personal and professional life.”

Coker Jr., who was extradited from Thailand last week and kept in jail since then, was scheduled to appear in Newark federal court on Thursday afternoon for a detention hearing in the case, where his father Peter Coker Sr. and a third man also are charged.

But he was never brought from a holding area to the courtroom, where his parents were waiting.

Instead, there was a two-hour delay in the start of the hearing that ensued after the judge, a prosecutor and Coker Jr.’s defense lawyers for the first time learned that there is a hold on him from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Such a detainer is standard when a non-citizen is extradited to face criminal charges in the U.S.

During the delay, Coker Jr.’s lawyers met with him and talked to the prosecutor.

Kiel eventually took the bench and began the hearing. Coker Jr.’s lawyers told him told the judge that they will seek an attorney to represent him in connection with the ICE detainer.

The ICE hold, which was lodged when Coker Jr. landed at JFK International Airport in New York last week, could keep Coker Jr. in jail even if he is granted bail in the criminal case.

In their letter seeking Coker Jr.’s detention, prosecutors cited his access to funds overseas, his citizenship from another country, his three decades living abroad in Hong Kong, and the 20-year maximum possible criminal sentence he faces if convicted as reasons to fear he will flee the charges.

“No evidence is more telling than a defendant’s own words,” prosecutors wrote.

They cited Coker Jr.’s legal statement on June 5, 2019, saying, “While I was born and raised in the U.S., I moved to Hong Kong in July, 1992 for career reasons and have established my roots and extensive social and family ties here. I have no intention to return to live or work in the U.S., and have therefore decided to renounce my U.S. nationality.”

Attorneys for Coker Jr. at his arraignment last week argued he was willing to put up all the money he has, about $4 million, and his parents’ North Carolina home as collateral to secure his release on bond in the case.

Coker Jr., Coker Sr. and James Patten were charged in an indictment on Sept. 26 with a scheme artificially boost the prices of publicly traded stocks of Hometown International, and a related shell company, E-Waste, to increase their attractiveness as merger partners for private companies.

While the elder Coker and Patten were arrested in North Carolina and then released on bonds of $100,000 each, Coker Jr. was a fugitive for months before being found and arrested in a resort area of Thailand by police there in January.

Coker Jr. had traveled there on a passport from the Caribbean island of St. Kitts and Nevis, where he has citizenship.

In their own letter to Kiel on Thursday, Coker Jr.’s attorneys argued he remained in Phuket, Thailand, after learning of his indictment because he was too sick to travel.

Coker Jr. claimed he was receiving medical attention for cirrhosis of his liver and hypoxemia prior to his arrest.

“Mr. Coker’s appearance in the United States would have likely occurred sooner if not for serious health issues he faced in the period following the unsealing of the indictment against him,” his attorneys argued in the filing.

“Mr. Coker prioritized seeking medical treatment in his local community of Thailand rather than immediately surrendering to authorities and risking the possibility that he would be transported by plane to the United States against his doctor’s advice.”

The indictment alleges that as a result of the scheme, the stock price of Hometown, which owned only a small, money-losing shop dubbed Your Hometown Deli, rose more than 900% as a result of the alleged scheme. E-Waste’s shares skyrocketed by almost 20,000%. The deli, which served Italian subs and cheesesteaks in Paulsboro, a small New Jersey town across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, has since closed.

Both companies publicly disavowed their massive market valuations after CNBC revealed legal issues surrounding people connected to the companies, including Coker Sr.

The younger Coker served for some time as Hometown International’s chairman.

Gabrielle Fonrouge reported from Newark and Dan Mangan reported from Englewood Cliffs, N.J.