Rey E. Grabato II has been added to the FBI’s Most Wanted Fraudsters list, putting a fugitive accused in a $650 million Ponzi scheme case on a new federal watchlist. Authorities say the reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction is up to $150,000.
The move matters now because Grabato is not an abstract defendant in a long-running case. He is the former president and majority owner of National Realty Investment Advisors LLC, or NRIA, and prosecutors say he helped draw in about 2,000 investors, including hundreds in New Jersey, between February 2018 and January 2022.
Federal prosecutors say Grabato and Thomas Nicholas Salzano used false and misleading representations to persuade people to invest in the NRIA Partners Portfolio Fund I LLC. The company then carried out an aggressive nationwide marketing campaign, using thousands of emails and television, radio and billboard advertising as well as investor presentations, while generating little to no profit and relying on money from new investors to keep the operation going.
That is why the fraud allegation landed as a Ponzi scheme case instead of a failed investment dispute. Prosecutors say Grabato and his alleged co-conspirators misappropriated millions of dollars in investor funds, and they also accuse him of participating in a separate effort to obstruct the Internal Revenue Service’s attempts to collect about $26 million in outstanding tax liabilities owed to the US government.
There is still a basic fact that remains unresolved: Grabato has ties to the Philippines and may be living there, but he stayed at large after he was charged in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey in Newark on Oct. 12, 2022. A federal arrest warrant was issued that day, while Salzano was arrested in October 2022. The indictment also identified Grabato as being from Hoboken, New Jersey, and the Philippines, and he has used the names Rey Encarnacion Grabato II, Rey Grabato II and Rey Li Encarnacion Grabato.
The FBI launched the Most Wanted Fraudsters list on June 4, 2026, as a separate lineup for fugitives accused or convicted of major fraud offenses, and Grabato is now on it with others who have Filipino ties, including Michael Lizaso Marasigan. For investors in the NRIA case, the listing does not change the past losses. It does sharpen the hunt for the man prosecutors say helped drive one of the larger alleged frauds to reach federal fugitive status.
