Alleged Ponzi Schemes

By PatrickPretty.com • September 1st, 2010

A Dallas man accused of fleecing investors in oil-and-gas schemes that gathered $535 million in Texas and Michigan has pleaded guilty to his role in the alleged schemes. “Investment fraud is, at its core, a betrayal of trust by one person to another,” said U.S. Attorney John M. Bales of the Eastern District of Texas.  [...]

BULLETIN: (UPDATED 11:27 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.) The Federal Trade Commission has lowered the boom on Clean Credit Report Services Inc. of Florida and three individuals associated with the firm. In a settlement from a case brought in October 2008, the FTC has obtained a judgment of $14.4 million. The defendants must surrender their assets, including [...]

BULLETIN: (UPDATED 9:32 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) William L. Walters has been extradited to the United States from Argentina to face Ponzi scheme charges in Colorado, prosecutors announced. “This extradition is the culmination of years of work and cooperation between my office and the FBI,” said Colorado Attorney General John Suthers. “In this case, justice delayed [...]

A New York man implicated by the FBI and the IRS in a Ponzi scheme has killed himself, the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester is reporting. It is at least the second Ponzi-related suicide in the United States in recent weeks. Florida Ponzi suspect Wayne McLeod, suspected of bilking federal employees, killed himself in Florida [...]

Dennis Bolze, a fraudster who silently bolted from Tennessee during the same month Bernard Madoff provided a glimpse of how a shocked nation would come to view Ponzi schemers, has been sentenced to 327 months in federal prison. Bolze, 61, was arrested in Pennsylvania on March 12, 2009, about three months after news of Madoff’s [...]

UPDATED 7:11 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) When U.S. District Judge James Rosenbaum sentenced Ponzi schemer Trevor Cook to a quarter of a century in federal prison earlier this week, the judge used some powerful words to describe Cook’s colossal fraud. Rosenbaum described the scheme that bilked investors out of at least $158 million as “wretched, tawdry [...]

EDITOR’S NOTE: If you’re keeping a Bubba Blue notebook on how to have a Ponzi scheme — as opposed to shrimp — here’s one for your list. A producer of “B-movies” such as “Confessions of a Pit Fighter” scammed investors in a $9 million Ponzi scheme by accepting “movie production loans” and promising returns of [...]

Four Pennsylvania residents have been charged in an alleged pyramid-scheme caper that gathered more than $7.5 million and bilked universities, nonprofits, local governments and other clients, investigators said. Charged in the case were Brian James Murray, 67, of Scranton; Murray’s wife, Diane D. Murray, 66; Christine M. Oliver-Shean, 51, of Scranton; and Oliver-Shean’s husband, Timothy [...]

BULLETIN: Ponzi schemer Trevor Cook has been sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for his role in an international Forex Ponzi scheme that gathered more than $190 million and fleeced victims out of more than $158 million. In ordering the prison term, U.S. District Judge James Rosenbaum sided with the prosecution’s recommendation of a [...]

DISCLOSURE: I was a volunteer Moderator at the Warrior Forum (WF) between December 2007 and July 2008. I learned what is best — and worst — about Internet Marketing at the WF. Just as my Mod days were coming to an end, the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme case was coming to the fore — and Internet [...]

Yet another HYIP scheme pushed on the TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup forums has been outlined by federal prosecutors — this time in Florida. The name of the scheme was Alpha Trade Group (ATG), and web records show that the scheme was pitched on TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup beginning on Oct. 7, 2009. Court records, meanwhile, show that [...]

BULLETIN: A citizen of Jamaica has been charged by U.S. prosecutors in Orlando with operating a Forex Ponzi scheme alleged to have gathered more than $200 million from more than 6,000 investors. David A. Smith had help from unindicted co-conspirators in Florida, prosecutors charged. The office of U.S. Attorney A. Brian Albritton of the Middle [...]

A church pastor targeted congregants in a Forex Ponzi scheme in which he misappropriated at least $462,000, the CFTC said. The pastor, Jeremiah C. Yancy, previously had been implicated by Idaho regulators in a real-estate swindle and scheme to sell unregistered securities that resulted in ruinous losses for investors, according to records. Yancy also is [...]

Growing up a child of Andy Bowdoin and advancing through adolescence and adulthood was hard because of Bowdoin’s habitual scheming, according to Scott Bowdoin, Andy Bowdoin’s son. “He uses religion — always,” Scott Bowdoin, 42, said flatly of his 75-year-old father, noting he had not spoken to Andy Bowdoin in about 15 years because the [...]

The PP Blog conducted an interview this morning with Scott Bowdoin, a son of AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin. Scott Bowdoin stressed that he did not approve of his father’s conduct or support Andy Bowdoin in any way. In August 2008, the U.S. Secret Service alleged that Andy Bowdoin was at the helm of a massive [...]

A Colombian national implicated in an international conspiracy to launder drug money has been sentenced to 45 months in prison, federal prosecutors announced. Meanwhile, another figure in the alleged scheme — Robert Hodgins, the operator of Dallas-based Virtual Money Inc. (VM) — remains at large, prosecutors said. Hodgins is wanted by Interpol on a warrant [...]

UPDATED 2:40 P.M. EDT (U.S.A) The Newark Star-Ledger and the Asbury Park Press are reporting that New Jersey real-estate developer Eli Weinstein has been arrested by the FBI in a Ponzi and affinity-fraud case that may involve $200 million or more. Both newspapers had photographers on the scene as the arrest was made this morning. [...]

The website of AdViewGlobal (AVG), an autosurf with close ties to the alleged AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme, has gone offline. Why AVG’s site was offline was not immediately clear. One person told the PP Blog that the site had been “down for days.” AVG’s domain, which lists a registration address in Uruguay and appears to use [...]

EDITOR’S NOTE: It is common for fraudsters to claim that “offshore” locations insulate HYIPs, autosurfs and other investment-fraud schemes from prosecution in the United States. It is equally common for purveyors to claim the schemes are harmless. The story of the alleged DMG pyramid scheme is one in which prosecutors allege a monstrous multilevel-marketing company [...]