UPDATE: Delaware AG Beau Biden Says Credit USA Pyramid Scheme Cost Two State Residents More Than $100,000; Victims Asked To Contact Prosecutors

The alleged Credit USA Inc. multilevel-marketing (MLM) pyramid scheme cost two Delaware residents more than $100,000, Attorney General Beau Biden said.

Biden has asked other potential victims to contact his Investor Protection Unit at 302-577-8424.

A state indictment announced two days ago charged Terrel Alexander, 41, Nicole Alexander, 41, and William Love III, 39, with Racketeering, Conspiracy to Commit Racketeering, Securities Fraud, Theft, Sale of Unregistered Securities and Acting as an Unregistered Broker/Agent.

Terrel Alexander lists an address in Wilmington, Del. Nicole Alexander, his ex-wife, lists an address in Mount Lauel, N.J., as does Love III.  Although Credit USA was registered in Delaware, the scheme was conducted from headquarters in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, prosecutors said.

“With [the] indictment we’re holding these defendants accountable for cheating Delawareans out of their money,” Biden said.

Even as a grand jury in Kent County was handing up the criminal indictments, prosecutors in New Jersey were filing civil allegations against Credit USA for selling unregistered stock and transacting in securities without being registered.

Delaware prosecutors described each of the defendants as a “principal” of Credit USA. In 2008, the company was named in franchising allegations in Wisconsin amid assertions it offered an investor rights to the entire state for $250,000, including a “non-refundable deposit” of $125,000.

Credit USA was not authorized to sell franchises in Wisconsin, according to the state Department of Financial Institutions, Division of Securities.

The Delaware indictment charges that Credit USA purported to offer “credit repair products,” but that the company operated as a “pyramid scheme designed to personally enrich the three defendants.”

Read information from the FTC on credit-repair scams.

Supplement your knowledge by reading information from the FTC on mortgage-relief, loan-modification and foreclosure-rescue scams, which sometimes accompany credit-repair schemes.