Is Trevor Cook Lying To Ponzi Investigators In $190 Million Case After Accepting Plea Deal? Investors Say Story Too Incredible To Believe

EDITOR’S NOTE: Some of the investors in the Trevor Cook/Pat Kiley Ponzi scheme in Minnesota say they believe Cook is lying to investigators about the whereabouts of assets and perhaps other elements of the probe.

“We do not believe this much money could be totally lost in such a short period of time,” an investor told the PP Blog this evening.

The comment followed on the heels of a grim statement issued today by R.J. Zayed, the court-appointed receiver in lawsuits brought against Cook by the SEC and CFTC in November. Cook, 37, pleaded guilty to criminal charges earlier this month and is required to cooperate in unraveling the money mystery as part of his plea agreement.

Zayed said he met with Cook April 23 — and Cook shed little new light on the probe.

Here is the verbatim statement of the receiver (coloring added to distinguish Zayed’s statement from the PP Blog’s Editor’s Note):

The Receiver met with Trevor Cook on April 23, 2010 at the United States Attorney’s office in Minneapolis, Minnesota for about 4½ hours for the purposes of identifying, locating, and retrieving assets belonging to the Receivership Estates. Also present at the meeting were representatives of the SEC, the CFTC, the FBI, the IRS, and the United States Attorney’s Office.

Other than the $362,700 in cash and the collection of “Fabergé” eggs or purses resembling “Fabergé” eggs that Cook caused to be turned over to FBI on April 12, 2010, and which were identified at Cook’s change-of-plea hearing on April 13, 2010, Cook provided the Receiver with little new information with respect to the nature and location of any Receivership assets. Almost all of the information that Cook provided to the Receiver was already known to the Receiver as a result of the Receiver’s own investigation in this matter.

Cook informed the Receiver that he had no submarines, houseboats, or hidden cash. He also identified no real estate, personal property, cash, bank accounts, safe-deposit boxes, jewelry collections, art collections, bonds, stocks, precious metals, buried treasures, or assets of any kind that were not already known to the Receiver. Cook further informed the Receiver that he has not given any assets to others to hold or hide for him. In sum, Cook identified little more than what the Receiver had previously identified, through the Receiver’s investigation, as assets belonging to the Receivership Estates.

Cook identified three gambling accounts that were not included in the public Receiver reports; however, the Receiver already was aware of them. Those accounts contain over $100,000, but the Receiver has not been able to retrieve the money because the accounts are located in places outside of the Receiver and the Court’s authority (Costa Rica, Cyprus, and Jamaica). With Cook’s cooperation, these funds may be recoverable.

According to Cook’s plea agreement, “his currency trading during the period from July 1, 2006 through August 31, 2009 at PFG in Chicago generated trading losses in excess of $35 million.” Cook also filed a claim against Crown Forex, S.A. for $67 million in investor funds that he claims were being held by Crown Forex, S.A. Crown Forex, S.A., however, is insolvent. Therefore, the timing and the amount of any potential recovery is speculative, uncertain, and unknown.

R. J. Zayed
Court-Appointed Receiver for Trevor Gilson Cook et al.