Alabama Securities Commission

UPDATED 9:10 A.M. EDT U.S.A. It’s whack-a-mole via MLM or network marketing — again. There are reports in Thai media about a major pyramid/Ponzi bust involving a cross-border “program” known as “UFunClub.” (See links below.) No American suspects appear to have been arrested or named so far, but Americans have promoted UFunClub. One of them, […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This statement from the Alabama Securities Commission is dated March 12, 2014. The PP Blog has applied in-house formatting elements to the statement. Other than that, the statement is verbatim. INVESTOR ALERT – Understanding high-risk investments What you don’t know CAN hurt you! MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA (March 12, 2014) As our state’s and the […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: Much remains murky about Profitable Sunrise, the alleged purveyor of five HYIP “plans,” including one bizarrely dubbed the “Long Haul” that purported to pay a preposterous 2.7 percent a day. The “Long Haul” payoff was dubbed the “Easter Gift.” Investors were told it would arrive April 1 — but it never materialized. One […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: Alabama was one of the first U.S. states to take action against the Profitable Sunrise HYIP “program,” issuing both an Investor Alert and a cease-and-desist order last month. The C&D lists two alleged “agents” of Profitable Sunrise, demonstrating that a “program” can create problems for pitchmen, perhaps even as the “program” operators make […]

BULLETIN: The Alberta Securities Commission (ASC) has issued a warning on the Profitable Sunrise “program.” The Canadian agency’s move followed on the heels of reports from First Calgary Financial that “several of its Calgary customers have attempted to withdraw significant amounts of funds from their accounts for wire transfers to the Czech Republic,” ASC said. […]

URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: The state of Alabama has issued a warning on Profitable Sunrise. The move follows on the heels of a cease-and-desist order issued last week by North Carolina. The warning comes in the form of an “investor alert” issued by the office of Joseph Borg, the director of the Alabama Securities […]

BULLETIN: The cavalcade of senior citizens implicated in alleged securities schemes continues. James Leonard Craft has been taken from a jail cell in Florida and placed in one in Alabama to answer felony charges that he was at the helm of a securities swindle. Craft, 71, of Milton, Fla., originally was arrested in Florida Sept. […]

The Washington Post and Bloomberg published Bob Carden’s story about how smart people get sucked into investment scams. The story is titled, “Investment fraud isn’t relegated to Wall Street: Beware the Ponzi schemer next door.” Carden produced the video “Tricks of the Trade: Outsmarting Investment Fraud.” Editor John Warnock assembled the package, which shows some […]

Want to mess with Alabamans in the securities fraud era? Don’t do it in Coffee County. A jury there took just 28 minutes to convict Scott Frye on five counts of selling unregistered securities or causing them to be sold. That’s an average of 5.6 minutes of deliberations per count. The case was prosecuted by […]