Federal authorities yesterday arrested the alleged architect of an Internet scheme that bilked nearly $13 million from people who ordered electronic goods from a company he set up over a toy store he ran in downtown Providence.

David Whitaker, who has a long criminal history, was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport by U.S. Secret Service agents and other federal authorities after he disembarked from a flight originating in Mexico. He had been living in Acapulco until Mexican authorities expelled him.

Whitaker fled Rhode Island two years ago after the company he cofounded, Mixitforme.com, imploded amid complaints it hadn’t delivered thousands of iPods, video-game systems, cell phones and other consumer electronics ordered over the Internet by people around the country. A federal criminal complaint filed yesterday in U.S. District Court lists five customers that lost some of the $13 million to Mixitforme. In all, the five wired nearly $2.5 million to the company to pay for electronics they never received.

“I lost my house because of this,” Matthew Grosso said earlier this year. Grosso owned Interactive Learning Networks, one of the five entities listed in the federal complaint. On Dec. 28, 2005, Interactive Learning wired nearly $758,000 to Mixitforme’s account at Bank Rhode Island, money Grosso’s been chasing ever since.

“I don’t ever expect to get my money back,” he said.

In addition to Grosso and other customers, a Georgia-based company hired by Mixitforme to process credit-card transactions lost an additional $2.2 million, money the processor refunded to cardholders who never received their orders, according to the 14-page complaint.

The complaint notes Whitaker “spent millions of dollars of Mixitforme funds on lavish personal expenses, including . . . the purchase of four luxury automobiles, the rental of a mansion in Miami at approximately $200,000 per month, the repeated use of private airplanes, repeated stays at luxury hotels, regular use of limousine drivers, a team of security personnel and the rental of a yacht.”

The 33-year-old Whitaker now faces 10 federal charges of defrauding Mixitforme’s customers and Nova Information Systems, the Georgia-based credit-card processor used by Mixitforme. Each of the fraud charges holds a maximum prison sentence of 20 years and a $250,000 fine.

Whitaker was taken before a federal judge in Los Angeles yesterday, according to a government spokesman, where lawyers were expected to ask that he be transferred to face criminal charges in Rhode Island. The result of that hearing was unclear yesterday. It’s possible Whitaker will face additional criminal charges in other states where he once operated similar businesses, including New Mexico, where he set up another Internet operation, according to law-enforcement officials.

Whitaker fled to Mexico in mid-2006 shortly before authorities searched Coyotego.com, a business he set up in Albuquerque, N.M. Federal authorities traced him to Acapulco, where he was recently charged by the Mexican government with being in that country illegally, according to Tom Connell, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Providence.

A Secret Service spokesman declined to say how his agency tracked Whitaker to Acapulco, though he had surfaced in Miami, Fla., and Albuquerque after leaving Rhode Island, according to law-enforcement officials and lawyers familiar with the case.

Whitaker used a number of aliases in Rhode Island, New Mexico and elsewhere, according to the federal document, including “David Andrews,” “Slade Austin” and “Michael Ballard.” He also went simply by “Chase” or “Josh.”

Whitaker is the third person charged in the Mixitforme case.

In January, a former Warwick man pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the case. Cory Johnson, formerly of 272 Pierce Ave., is due to be sentenced June 20 on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering for his role in the Internet retailer. Johnson ran the company with Whitaker.

A government lawyer told a federal judge that authorities could prove that Johnson signed documents claiming Mixitforme’s gross receipts totaled about $2.3 million during 2003 and 2004, years in which the company wasn’t registered to do business and that Johnson’s federal tax returns for those years don’t reflect any business income from Mixitforme.

Separately, the government alleges that Johnson improperly transferred $27,000 in December 2005 from Mixitforme’s business account at Bank Rhode Island to his personal account at the bank.

The 29-year-old Johnson faces up to 15 years in prison and fines totaling $500,000. Johnson has surrendered his passport to federal authorities but remains free on a $50,000 unsecured bond. He now lives in Morrisville, Pa.

A former Bank Rhode Island branch manager, David Carpenter, also faces prison time for his role in the scam, which put his Providence-based bank on the hook for more than $3 million in losses.

A federal judge will sentence Carpenter, 34, of Cranston, next month as a result of a guilty plea he made in December in federal court. Carpenter acknowledged in court that he accepted a bribe — the promise of a high-paying job at Mixitforme — in exchange for helping defraud the bank of nearly $1 million. That’s the amount initially lost by the bank before it discovered the fraud. Bank Rhode Island has since recovered the bulk of that money from its insurer.

The charges against the three men arose after agents from the Secret Service, the FBI, the U.S. Postal Service, the Internal Revenue Service, state and Providence police seized business records and computer equipment in March 2006 from the company’s office at 275 Westminster St.

The records seizure at Mixitforme followed a move by Bank Rhode Island to push the company into state receivership in an attempt to collect at least $900,000 the bank was owed by the online electronics retailer. State receivership is a form of bankruptcy in which a court appoints a fiduciary to either sell a company or liquidate it to pay accumulated debt.

A court-appointed receiver shut down Biggles Toy Store, a business related to Mixitforme that was run out of the same building at 275 Westminster St.

Whitaker and Johnson, who lived together for a time in Providence, ran both companies.

In phone conversations Whitaker initiated late last year with a Journal reporter, he said he started the business to sell iPods, preloaded with music, to customers they found over the Internet. He then sold the business to Johnson and they ran it together.

Johnson was listed as the company owner in a business registration statement filed with the state.

Whitaker went by the titles of “presidential advisor,” “counsel to the president,” and the more pedestrian “chief operating officer” while Mixitforme operated in Rhode Island, first out of a house in Cranston and then at the Westminster Street building.

Whitaker and Johnson eventually moved into high-priced residences in the Peerless building, just down the street from Mixitforme’s office, according to former employees and others, a move Whitaker acknowledged to a reporter.

In those conversations, Whitaker alluded to past crimes, but gave few specifics.

“The authorities know who I am,” he said during a Dec. 7 phone call. “I have a criminal history.”

Yesterday’s court filing outlines a criminal record dating back to 1997, when he was arrested by the FBI in Hawaii for bank fraud and “e-racketeering.”

He was sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to pay restitution of more than $158,000 in that case. He was arrested in New Orleans in 1998, again by the FBI, for bank fraud and sentenced to a year in prison. A 2000 arrest by U.S. Marshals for forging securities followed, though the document does not state where he served his 10-month sentence. He also served “substantial time” in federal prison for violating parole, the document states.

pgrimald@projo.com