Trevor Cook case entangles Iraq veteran

Jon Greco looked nothing like a high roller when he appeared in federal court Wednesday to answer charges that he lied to federal agents about hiding some of the loot from Trevor Cook's $190 million Ponzi scheme.

The 6-foot-4, 285-pound Iraqi war veteran wore a black T-shirt and blue jeans and slumped in his seat as he waited to make his first court appearance and plead not guilty to two counts of lying to federal agents, punishable by up to five years in prison.

An indictment unsealed Wednesday in St. Paul makes him only the second person charged in connection with Cook's far-flung fraud scheme, which had links in Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Panama.

Cook, 38, was sentenced in August to 25 years in prison for running a bogus currency investment program out of the Van Dusen mansion in Minneapolis. Nearly 1,000 people were defrauded in the scheme, mostly retirees.

Greco, 40, of Minneapolis, was a friend of Cook's brother Graham and worked briefly at the Van Dusen mansion as a security guard before he was deployed to Iraq with the Minnesota National Guard.

Greco resumed his friendship with Graham Cook after he returned from the war in January 2010, and allegedly helped him hide cash, coins and foreign currency from the court-appointed receiver rounding up assets from the fraud scheme.

A dancer at Schiek's strip club in Minneapolis told federal agents that she'd known Greco for a decade, and he hadn't been a big spender until last summer, when he suddenly started getting generous. She said Greco took her and a friend gambling and fed $100 bills into slot machines, according to an affidavit by John Tschida, a criminal investigator with the Internal Revenue Service.

A security camera later recorded Greco as he stuffed a bag loaded with about $150,000 in loot into a locker at the Mall of America.

Greco was arrested at the Bloomington mall in July when he arrived to pick up the bag, which contained $10,000 in cash, valuable coins and foreign currency. He claimed that he earned the cash in Iraq, and that he had inherited the coins from an uncle.

But many of the coins had been minted after his uncle died, Tschida said.

Greco requested a public defender Wednesday, saying he's unemployed, has just $310 in the bank, and no other assets.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Keyes approved his request and set his trial date for May 23.