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Tag: Beau Biden

  • BULLETIN: Mass Shooting At Delaware’s New Castle County Courthouse

    breakingnews72A mass shooting occurred this morning at the New Castle County Courthouse in Wilmington, Del., multiple media outlets are reporting. Wilmington is the state’s largest city.

    The Wilmington News Journal is reporting that two women were killed by gunfire and three other people were wounded. Among the wounded are two Capitol police officers. The gunman reportedly is dead.

    A prosecutor in Kaufman County, Texas, was killed last month in a courthouse shooting.

    Vice President Joe Biden is a former Senator from Delaware. His son, Joseph R. “Beau” Biden III, is the state’s attorney general. The vice president’s schedule today includes an appearance at Girard College in Philadelphia to hold a “roundtable discussion with law enforcement officials and Members of Congress on gun safety,” according to WhiteHouse.gov.

    CNN is reporting that Wilmington’s police chief was expected to attend the event in nearby Philadelphia.

  • DELAWARE: Woman Bilked In Investment Scam Later Bilked In ‘Investment Recovery Scam,’ AG Biden Says; Patrick A. Wiley Indicted On Racketeering, Securities-Fraud Charges

    EDITOR’S NOTE: The indictment in Delaware against Patrick A. Wiley of Detroit illustrates the dangers of entrusting money to a person who claims he can help you recover money lost in a securities swindle. It also illustrates that a person who claims he can help you recover money lost to a securities swindle — and then strings you along — can be charged with serious crimes.

    A Detroit man has been indicted for racketeering in Delaware amid allegations he swindled at least $276,000 from a woman in an “investment recovery scam,” prosecutors said.

    Patrick A. Wiley, 42, also was charged with securities fraud, selling unregistered securities and theft, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden said. The prosecution was brought by Biden’s Securities Unit.

    All in all, the victim in the case lost more than $300,000, including $45,000 in the original swindle.

    Wiley’s investment-recovery scam grew out of an earlier fraud scheme in which the victim was persuaded by another man to invest in a “joint trading venture” that purportedly involved “several wealthy persons in London, England” and would fetch a return of $10 million on an outlay of $50,000 in only months, Biden’s office said.

    “With deep sympathies for her loss, we remind all Delawareans that any deal that sounds too good to be true, probably is,” Biden said.

    The victim was recruited into the investment scheme in early 2005 by Darren Dobson, 45, of Charlotte, N.C., Biden’s office said. After a state probe, Dobson was indicted in Delaware earlier this year on charges of securities fraud, selling unregistered securities and transacting business as an unregistered agent.

    Investigators said the victim sent $45,000 to a Tampa company known as VFG Management
    LLC based on Dobson’s claim “that a $50,000 investment would yield a return of $10 million by June 2005.”

    VFG Management was “the entity through which the London partners were supposedly operating the joint trading venture,” Biden’s office said.

    When no returns materialized, the victim contacted Wiley based on her belief he had been an investor in the same scam, authorities said.

    “Wiley claimed he had information regarding the principals involved and that he would pursue them to obtain the victim’s promised investment return,” Biden’s office said. “On numerous occasions between October 2005 and November 2007, Wiley solicited funds from the victim to defray the cost of his efforts, including trips that he was supposedly taking abroad for meetings with the London trading partners and their attorney. During that time period, the victim wired more than $276,000 to Wiley on sixty-one separate occasions. The victim never received the promised investment return or the investment principal.”

    Biden described the alleged scam as a “con game.”

    “We are particularly disturbed by crimes that use trust and confidence as a means to an
    illegitimate end,” Biden said. “The victim in this case has lost over $300,000 in a con game.”

  • 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.

  • MLM Firm Credit USA Inc. Hammered By State Attorneys General Amid Pyramid Scheme, Securities Allegations; Terrel Alexander, Nicole Alexander, William Love III Indicted

    UPDATED 3:07 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) State prosecutors in Delaware and New Jersey have lowered the boom on an alleged multilevel-marketing (MLM) pyramid scheme known as Credit USA Inc.

    Credit USA purportedly sold credit-repair and “identity protection” services, and operated the company to enrich three criminal defendants unjustly, prosecutors said.

    Criminal indictments were handed up in Delaware against Terrel Alexander, 41, of Wilmington, Nicole Alexander, 41, and William Love III, 39, of Mount Laurel, N.J. The criminal charges were brought by the office of Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden.

    Among the charges were racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering, securities fraud, theft, selling unregistered securities and conducing business as unregistered brokers or agents.

    Meanwhile, New Jersey Attorney General Paula T. Dow sued the company and Terrel and Nicole Alexander amid allegations of selling unregistered stock and transacting in securities without being registered. Nicole Alexander is the ex-wife of Terrel Alexander.

    “We’re taking action on behalf of the investors who suffered losses when these defendants allegedly broke our state securities laws,” Dow said.

    New Jersey officials estimated that “at least 100 investors” paid Credit USA for “shares” in the firm.

    Part of the scheme was to entice prospects to purchase shares priced between $7 and $15 “before the company goes public on the stock exchange,” prosecutors said.

    Credit USA sold at least 28,000 shares of unregistered stock to at least 100 investors who forked over more than $125,000, prosecutors said. The scheme was selling shares as recently as September 2009, according to court filings.

    Shares were sold in “lots” of 100 to members, associates and “proposed officers” of the MLM firm, prosecutors said.

    “The investors included people who had paid to become ‘members’ of Credit USA and ‘associates,’ members who had paid an additional fee that allowed them to sell Credit USA services to others,” New Jersey officials said.

    “I applaud the coordination among the states to thwart this operation,” said Marc B. Minor, chief of the N.J. Bureau of Securities. “Credit USA’s sale of unregistered stock highlights the public’s need to be more vigilant and to check with the Bureau before investing in order to avoid being victims.”

    Authorities said Credit USA was headquartered at Two Penn Center Plaza in Philadelphia from August 2005 to May 2007. Beginning in June 2007, Credit USA operated at One Cherry Hill, Suite 400, Cherry Hill, New Jersey. The company was registered in Delaware.

    Beau Biden, the Delaware attorney general, is the son of U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden. The younger Biden only recently returned to duty after suffering what was described in May as a minor stroke.

    One of Biden’s first official duties after returning to work was to announce the indictments against the Alexanders and Love III.

    If convicted of all counts in the criminal case, the defendants each face up to 76 years in prison.