STATEN ISLAND, NY
Not so long ago, Saquib Khan was a savvy and suave businessman who hosted a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton’s U.S. Senate campaign in his Todt Hill home and chairing a money-raising event for then-Gov. George Pataki. He’s in the news again for a different reason- he wrote $82 million in bad checks during a two-week period. Khan, 51, was recently arrested and charged in Brooklyn federal court with bank fraud. Khan owner of Richmond Wholesale Company Inc., the Charleston-based firm wholesales cigarettes, tobacco, snack food products and bottled water to small retailers, 
including convenience stores, delis and gas stations throughout the five boroughs and Long Island. Court papers allege Khan fleeced six unidentified financial institutions between Nov. 1 and 13 through a “large-scale check-kiting” scheme. Khan wrote checks to himself from accounts he held, despite having insufficient funds to cover the withdrawals, said court papers submitted by an FBI special agent. After depositing the checks into separate accounts he has, Khan tried to cover the exchange by wiring money from the deposit account back to the withdrawal account. By doing so, Khan “fraudulently covered otherwise insufficient checks and artificially inflated the account balances of the [withdrawal] accounts,” said court records. During those two weeks in November, Khan wrote “at least $82 million” in checks for which his accounts had insufficient funds, said court papers. “Those checks do not appear to have had any legitimate purpose other than to support the ‘check-kiting’ scheme,” court documents allege. The financial institutions didn’t catch on to the scam until they had lost about $20 million, said court records. Khan is currently free on $500,000 bond after his arraignment in Brooklyn federal court. Khan‘s lawyer, Sharon L. McCarthy, said Tuesday her client has been trying to resolve the matter. “Mr. Khan has been cooperating with the banks,” she said. “Long before he was charged, he had been working with the banks to try to pay them back.” Advance records show Khan has hobnobbed over the years with some pretty heady company. In February 2000, he held a $1,000-a-person fund-raiser at his then-Todt Hill home for Hillary Clinton’s Democratic Senate campaign. The event brought in an estimated $53,000. Just over two years later in October 2002, he chaired a fund-raiser at the Renaissance catering hall in Grant City that pulled in about $50,000 for then-Gov. George Pataki’s re-election campaign. Pataki is a Republican. Online records of the New York Department of State show Richmond Wholesale Company Inc. is active and in good standing. It was incorporated in 1971 and Khan is listed as its chairman or chief executive officer.