He was Pablo Escobar’s pretend son.
But the millions he stole from investors were very real.
Jawad Fakroune, a Chicago businessman, was already serving a federal sentence of six and a half years for terrorizing a restaurant owner. Now he has agreed to plead guilty to a fraud scheme that fleeced investors of millions while he dodged federal and Illinois taxes.
Fakroune admitted bilking at least $5.7 million from more than a dozen people, including an unnamed professional basketball player who handed him roughly $2.45 million in 2022.
Fakroune promised him that he would put the money into a shipping-container business and California marijuana-growing operation. Instead, Fakroune blew much of it on himself, according to his plea deal.
The money helped pay for Fakroune’s residential compound in Lemont, rent on a New York City apartment, restaurant tabs, shopping sprees at designer stores, luxury watches and a 2022 Cadillac Escalade he bought for another person, according to the plea agreement.
Fakroune acknowledged the supposed investment was a lie.
And that was only part of the hustle.
Another investor, identified as “Individual L,” turned over approximately $2.85 million to invest in Fakroune’s phony cannabis business. She was promised a whopping 30% return after just three months.
To make the scam look legitimate, Fakroune showed the investor marijuana packaging he claimed came from the grow operation and staged phone calls with supposed investors, according to the plea agreement. Last year, Individual L lied to FBI and IRS agents about her dealings with Fakroune, authorities said.
Under his plea agreement, filed Wednesday in federal court in Chicago, Fakroune admitted to wire fraud and tax evasion. He agreed to repay his victims more than $5.7 million, along with back taxes.
If U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin approves the deal, Fakroune would get an additional prison term of at least 12 months and no more than 42 months to be served on top of his existing extortion sentence.
In January, a federal jury convicted Fakroune of violently trying to collect $1.5 million from his restaurant business partner, Adolfo Garcia. Secret FBI recordings captured Fakroune threatening to kill Garcia and his family, and a hidden camera showed Fakroune assaulting Garcia at a River North restaurant.
In June, U.S. District Judge Manish Shah sentenced Fakroune to 78 months in prison, calling him a “lawless, violent bully.” Prosecutors described Fakroune’s pursuit of Garcia as a yearslong “campaign of terror.”
His criminal saga also produced one lingering mystery.
When FBI agents raided Fakroune’s New York apartment in December 2024, they found two Glock pistols that had been reported stolen. Fakroune’s lawyer later said the weapons belonged to a Chicago police officer who had falsely reported them stolen.
The Chicago Police Department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs opened an investigation but closed it without determining the officer’s identity.
Fakroune wasn’t around when the federal agents found the guns. He’d slipped away from the FBI during the raid and fled through Manhattan wearing little more than a black garbage bag, according to prosecutors. Agents caught him a month later at a rental home in Michigan City, Indiana.
Fakroune cultivated an image as a globe-trotting businessman and falsely boasted to people that he was a son of Pablo Escobar, the notorious Colombian cocaine kingpin.
Fakroune is a Moroccan national. He arrived in New York in 2001 in the federal diversity visa program, also known as the green-card lottery, which is open to people from countries with low immigration rates to the United States.
In 2008, he was convicted in New York of identity theft and bribery and served about four years in prison.
It’s unclear why Fakroune was allowed to stay in the United States or when he came to Chicago.
But he has rubbed elbows with some of the city’s political and restaurant elite, including former top Pritzker administration aide Lisa Duarte, Illinois Sports Facilities Authority board member Patricia “Trish” Rooney and restaurateur Phil Stefani. None was accused of wrongdoing.
Fakroune admits he failed to file federal income tax returns for five straight years, from 2020 through 2024, while using cash and other people to hide income from the IRS.
His plea agreement says he raked in at least $8.37 million during those years. Prosecutors calculated the resulting federal and Illinois tax losses at more than $3.3 million.
In addition to the money he promised to repay his victims, the IRS and the state of Illinois, Fakroune has also agreed to forfeit his Lemont property, two Breitling watches and about $120,000 in cash seized by federal agents.