BULLETIN: California Man, Wife And 68-Year-Old Mother Arrested In Alleged Bail-Bond Ponzi Scheme Tied To Bogus Company

EDITOR’S NOTE: If you’ve been keeping a “Bubba Blue” notebook on ways to have your Ponzi scheme as opposed to shrimp, here is another entry . . .

BULLETIN: A California man, his wife and his Indiana-based mother have been arrested in an alleged $2.5 million Ponzi scheme tied to a bogus insurance company known as “State Bonding California,” which purportedly was in the business of arranging bail, authorities said.

Anthony Trae Carlson, 42, was charged with 40 felony counts. His wife, Mariah Waterfall O’Brien, 40, was charged with 23 felonies. Meanwhile, his 68-year-old mother — Arvina Joyce Carlson — also was charged with 23 felony counts.

Bail for Anthony Carlson was set at $2.5 million. Bail for his wife and mother was set at $1.9 million each.

“This family conspired to rip off honest investors,” said Dave Jones, California’s insurance commissioner.

The scheme began in February 2005  and ran through December 2008, investigators at the California Department of Insurance (CDI) said. Among the claims were that the bogus bonding firm conducted business in nearly all of the U.S. states (at least 44 of 50) and produced more than $1 billion in annual revenue.

Such a purported widespread geographic presence and such purported fabulous revenue numbers apparently tricked investors into believing they’d receive “guaranteed” annual returns of between 19 percent and 21 percent after purchasing “membership interests.”

At least seven people plowed more than $2.5 million into the scheme, investigators said.

“At least one suspect used fraudulent multimillion dollar State Bonding California dividend checks to persuade victims to invest in the bogus company,” investigators said.

But “State Bonding California was never licensed to sell insurance by CDI nor was it licensed to offer securities by the California Department of Corporations,” investigators said.

The probe “revealed that the only address associated with the company was a post office box located in Hollywood,” investigators said. “In addition, none of the defendants were licensed to offer securities in the State of California.”

Anthony Carlson and his wife lived “a lavish Hollywood lifestyle” in the hills of Los Feliz, investigators said.

If Anthony Carlson is convicted on all counts, he will face a potential sentence of more than 27 years in state prison, investigators said. His wife and mother could be sentenced to 21 years each in state prison, if convicted on all counts.