By Larry Neumeister
NEW YORK (AP) — The former chief executive of two clothing technology companies, once portrayed as rising fashion entrepreneurs, has come to face charges on an unsealed Friday, claiming that they’ve deceived more than $300 million in investors over the past six years.
Christine Hunsicker, 48, of Lafayette, New Jersey, has been charged with six counts including fraud in the prosecution in Manhattan federal court, aggravated identity theft and false statements.
US lawyer Jay Clayton said Hunsicker forged documents, produced audits and made material misrepresentations of the company’s financial position in order to fraudulent Caastle Inc. and P180 investors.
The indictment said she portrayed Castl as a high-growth private company with considerable cash when she knew it was facing serious financial distress.
In a statement, defense attorneys Michael Levy and Anna Skotoko said despite efforts with the prosecutors and the Securities and Securities Commission to be “fully cooperative, transparent and transparent,” the prosecutors “chosen to present the public with incomplete and highly distorted pictures for today’s prosecution.”
“There’s a lot more to this story, and we look forward to telling it,” they said.
According to the indictment, Hunsicker continued her fraudulent scheme even after the Caastle board ruled out her and barred her from seeking investment or taking other actions on behalf of the company.
She “sticked to her plans” even after law enforcement agents confronted her about the fraud, the indictment said.
Before allegations of fraud emerged, Hunsicker looked like a rising star in the fashion world after being nominated to Crane’s New York business “40 under 40” list.
The charges were valued at $1.4 billion by Hunsicker at a time when he was in financial trouble with limited cash and heavy costs, the indictment said.
Hunsicker lied to investors in February 2019, but prosecutors alleged that he continued to do so until March this year.
They said she gave investors an accidentally inflated income statement, fake audited financial statements, fictitious bank account records and fake corporate records.
She reportedly told one investor in August 2023 that Caastle reported operating profit of nearly $24 million in the second quarter of 2023, operating profit of less than $30,000.
The indictment allegedly carried out the majority of the fraud by filling up a $275 million castle investor before the investors discovered her fraud, before forming her P180 last year.
Through misrepresentation and omission, she deceived about 30 million investors out of the roughly $30 million, the indictment said.
Caastle filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy last month, saying hundreds of investors now own Western stakes.
Original issue: July 18, 2025, 6:43pm EDT
