David Robert Gilmour Ross, New Zealand Ponzi Swindler, Sentenced To Nearly 11 Years In Prison

David Robert Gilmour Ross, the 63-year-old architect of New Zealand’s largest Ponzi scheme, has been sentenced to 10 years and 10 months in prison, New Zealand’s Serious Fraud Office announced.

“More than 1,200 client accounts were affected by Mr Ross’ scheme, so his offending has had a devastating impact on many lives,” said SFO Director Julie Read. “The financial losses are not only significant to those individuals but they will have a flow on effect as those investors’ dealings in the New Zealand economy are impacted. It is important the SFO remains vigilant in fighting financial crime so we don’t see a repetition of this sort of scheme.”

Investors took a bath for about $NZ115 million, roughly $US95.36 million. Through accounting deceptions and false statements, “Mr Ross reported false profits of $[NZ]351 million,” SFO said. That’s roughly $US291 million.

Ross engaged in the “purported trading of the fictitious securities,” SFO said, noting that he admitted to “knowingly making a false declaration to [the Financial Markets Authority] for the purposes of obtaining authorisation as an Authorised Financial Adviser (AFA) and producing documents to FMA which he knew to be false or misleading.”

A resident of Wellington, Ross pleaded guilty in August to false accounting, theft by person in special relationship, providing a financial service when he was not registered for that service, making false statements and producing false documents, SFO said.

Ross was associated with an entity known as Ross Asset Management (RAM).

“Large portions of client portfolios shown as invested through a broker ‘Bevis Marks’ were fictitious and never existed,” SFO said.