Another Scam In Zeekland Region

A 48-year-old resident of Lexington, N.C., has been charged criminally in an alleged “precious metals investment scam,” the office of North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine F. Marshall said.

Huge profits purportedly would flow within two weeks from gold transactions in the Middle East, according to related state filings.

Rondell Scott Hedrick  was taken to the Davidson County Jail under $150,000 secured bond, Marshall’s office said.

He was charged with 10 counts of securities fraud, five counts of obtaining property by false pretense, five counts of securities-dealer registration violation, five counts of security-registration violation and two counts of violation of a cease-and-desist order.

Hedrick “was not registered to sell financial securities during the alleged incidents and his company was shown on the Secretary of State website to be not in good standing,” Marshall’s office said.

“We always ask people to check before they invest,” Marshall said. “In this case, checking first would have shown a corporation that had been dissolved and that neither the suspect nor his investment offering were registered to be doing this business. Plus, he and the company had already been issued a cease and desist order for pursuing this type of activity.”

The activity that led to Hedrick’s jailing involved trawling for investor cash on Craigslist, amid claims he was using the cash “to buy gold overseas and then re-sell[ing] for huge profits within a matter of days,” Marshall’s office said.

In November 2012, Marshall’s Securities Division accused Hedrick in a cease-and-desist order of posting an ad a month earlier on Craigslist in Los Angeles that said, “$5,000 Investment pays $15,000 in about 10 days.” He also made at least one more Craigslist pitch during October 2012, according to the order.

Hedrick “is or was” the president of “Hedrick Consulting, Incorporated” in Lexington, according to the November 2012 order.

Upon seeing the ad, a California investor called Hedrick and was told Hedrick “was raising capital to buy gold bars in Dubai,” according to the order.

Dubai is a city in the United Arab Emirates.

The investor, according to the order, wired Hedrick $5,000 to a Hedrick account at a North Carolina credit union, after Hedrick had provided instructions and claimed he’d be leaving for Dubai soon and providing the investor a return of 200 percent.

No evidence emerged that Hedrick made the promised trip to Dubai to purchase gold, and the investor received neither the promised return nor the return of the principal, according to North Carolina filings.

“[H]e has refused to return Investor’s money,” the state said.

Hedrick also operated a website styled “HedrickConsulting.com,” according to the order.

HedrickConsulting.com is still viewable online. Alongside photos of glistening buildings in Dubai, these word appears (italics added):

Gold Buyer
International Consultant and Broker
Introduction to MTN – BG – SBLC Sellers
Coming Soon: Electronic Sales Division

United States – West Africa – Dubai

Contact information for for Hedrick Consulting in “Raleigh, North Carolina” and “Malibu, California” also appear at the site.

Lexington is a small town known for delicious barbeque, rather than crime.

But Lexington also was the home of Zeek Rewards, which the SEC described in August 2012 as a $600 million Ponzi- and pyramid fraud. Prior to the filing of the SEC complaint, Zeek complained publicly on its Blog about purported interference in its operations by unnamed “North Carolina Credit Unions.”

“All” criticism of Zeek had been “unprofessional” and based on “false information,” the firm bizarrely contended on Aug. 4, 2012, 13 days prior to the SEC action.

Among other things, Zeek planted the seed that it would provide a daily return in excess of 1 percent and an annualized return in the hundreds of percent. The SEC later said Zeek duped members into believing that such returns came through legitimate means, alleging that Zeek operator Paul R. Burks “unilaterally and arbitrarily” determined the daily dividend rate so that it would average “approximately 1.5% per day, giving investors the false impression that the business is profitable.”

With the Zeek debacle still in the news 14 months after the SEC action, Lexington again unwillingly found itself back in the headlines, in a story on yet another fraud scheme aimed at its residents. Earlier this month, state investigators charged an out-of-town vendor at the Lexington wholesale market with two felony counts of trademark violations.

In the trademark case, Hua Wu, 40, of Raleigh, was accused of possessing nearly $60,000 worth of “counterfeit designer handbags and designer labels.”

“The sale of counterfeit trademarked goods harms people across the economic spectrum, from consumers to the legitimate manufacturers and retailers who build our economy,” Marshall said earlier this month.

News about the arrest of Lexington resident Hedrick followed the news of Wu’s arrest by about three weeks.