BULLETIN: Reuters Reports At Least 4 Dead Amid Heavy Gunfire In Protest Related To Collapsed Ponzi Scheme In Sudan

At least four people died in Sudan today after gunfire erupted at a rally at which an estimated 1,000 people had gathered to protest against a Ponzi scheme that devastated investors, Reuters is reporting.

Sudanese security forces fired on the crowd, and members of the crowd also had weapons and exchanged gunfire with the forces, witnesses told Reuters.

Early reports are sketchy. Witnesses told Reuters that as many as 10 people had been killed and up to 40 people injured. Fighting was described as intense. The clash broke out in Sudan’s strife-ridden Darfur region.

Early reports described the financial scheme as a regional one that resembled the Tom Petters’ Ponzi scheme in Minnesota and other schemes in which investors are told their money is being used to purchase goods but instead is being used to pay other investors.

“They said they were taking the money, going to Khartoum and other places outside Sudan to buy goods to sell in the markets,” a person told Reuter’s last week, after police used tear gas to break up the crowd. “That is how they said they made their money.”

Petters was sentenced to 50 years in prison for his scheme. Last week, the SEC charged Miami Beach businessman Nevin K. Shapiro in a scheme in which investors allegedly were told their money was being used to purchase groceries at a lower price in one market and sell them at a higher price in another.

The Sudan protest escalated today. Read the report from Reuters.