Canadian race car driver Josh Cartu strikes a glamorous posture on social media: surrounded by expensive sports cars, hobnobbing with movie stars and fashion models, and travelling on his private jet to European party hotspots such as Ibiza and Cannes.

Cartu, who grew up in St. Catharines, Ont., boasts more than 700,000 followers on an Instagram account (@jcartu) that documents his exploits racing Ferraris, attending Milan Fashion Week and taking a ride in a Russian MiG fighter jet to the edge of the stratosphere.

Among those following closely are securities regulators in Ontario and the United States, who accuse Cartu and his two younger brothers of enriching themselves through an illegal online stock trading scheme run from an office in Israel.

U.S. officials allege the Cartus ran a “massive fraudulent” trading operation between 2013 and 2017 that appears to have helped fund Cartu’s lavish lifestyle through multi-million-dollar transfers to off-shore bank accounts in the Caribbean…read more.