Gazette Reporter Tatiana Zarnowski wrote a detailed account of ShopWurld Founder David Silipigno's business history in her January 28, 2009 article."Local businessman and philanthropist David Silipigno has started a new online business venture that he says has taken off like wildfire.
Silipigno calls ShopWurld a viral marketing opportunity that is spreading as fast as social networking sites Facebook and MySpace, with one important difference.
“With those programs, nobody makes any money. With our program, everybody makes money,” he said.
“At the end of the day, there’s nobody who can lose any money through this.”
She goes on to reference Silipigno for his "checkered past":
Silipigno is known for his checkered past, which includes convictions for felony wire fraud and lying under oath in 2003. He was charged after his first company, National Finance Corp. in Halfmoon, closed suddenly in 1999, leaving 300 employees out of a job just before Christmas.
Silipigno was sentenced to three years of supervised release and fined $100,000, plus he had to make $5.6 million in restitution payments from money his company fraudulently kept from investment banker Bear Stearns & Co.
He paid the fine and completed his sentence, according to federal court records.
Silipigno later founded and worked as a consultant for First Guarantee Mortgage in Saratoga Springs, which specialized in bad credit and subprime loans until it dissolved about a year ago.
Several First Guarantee customers were irked enough to file complaints about the company with the Better Business Bureau.
The bureau got 53 complaints about the mortgage company in the last three years, mostly for selling practices and service issues, according to a BBB report. Of those complaints, 24 were resolved.
