Arthur Nadel

Stephen J. Klos, an 86-year-old church usher who sold elderly congregants in the Seattle area into a $3 million Ponzi scheme that began in 2004, has pleaded guilty to 10 counts of securities fraud, the office of King County Prosecuting Attorney Daniel T. Satterberg said. Klos “met several of victims at his church and told […]

UPDATED 10:56 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.) The ASA Monitor Ponzi and criminals’ forum now is redirecting to a website operated by CashX.com, a Canadian payment processor that hawks MasterCard debit cards and says it permits customers to withdrawn money to Liberty Reserve. Liberty Reserve is a Ponzi-friendly payment processor purportedly headquartered in Costa Rica after earlier […]

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 […]

First, Richard M. Hersch, 72, told investors they’d earn up to 6 percent a week by plowing money into his company, All States ATM Inc. He then explained the company had “contracts” with major horse-racing tracks in California and elsewhere to operate Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) on the “back side” of the tracks. Ordinary horse-racing […]

UPDATED 5:12 P.M. ET (U.S.A. JAN. 12) So, you want to mislead your clients about your role in your business, rely on the assertions of your business colleague and not perform thorough due diligence and double-check his claims that your investors are making enormous profits? Want to say later — after a Ponzi scheme collapses — […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: There is a link at the bottom of this story to a report filed by Burton Wiand, the receiver in the Arthur Nadel Ponzi case in Sarasota, Fla. We encourage readers to read the document in its entirety. The Nadel case is not yet a year old. Nadel, who turned 77 today and […]

Both state and federal prosecutors in Michigan have been attacking Ponzi schemers and affinity fraudsters. Yesterday the office of Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox charged three men with racketeering for their roles in an alleged time-share Ponzi scheme targeted at senior citizens. In a separate Michigan case, federal prosecutors have announced the guilty plea of […]

As the FBI and IRS executed search warrants at the Florida office of attorney Scott Rothstein this morning amid allegations he ran a covert Ponzi scheme that could have drained as much as $500 million from investors, prosecutors up north were concentrating on arresting lawyers in a separate case involving insider trading on Wall Street. […]

A 68-year-old Texas woman has been charged with running a $500,000 Ponzi scheme. Julia Ann Schmidt was indicted in Waco. She now joins a roster of other senior citizens recently implicated in alleged Ponzi schemes or convicted of crimes in which a Ponzi was the modus operandi. Federal prosecutors said today that Schmidt posed as […]

UPDATED 1:33 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) The failure yesterday of San Joaquin Bank in Bakersfield, Calif., brought the total of bank failures in the United States this year to 99. With weeks remaining in the year, it is a virtual certainty that failures will top the 100 mark. Banks have been failing at an average rate […]

To many residents of Florida, Michael Riolo was their Bernard Madoff. Riolo, 38, of Boca Raton, was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison (293 months) today for bilking investors in a $44 million Ponzi scheme. The scheme began in 1999 and collapsed in 2008. “During these tough economic times, it is more important […]