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Tag: Bo Beckman

  • STAR TRIBUNE: Ponzi Pitchman Bo Beckman Sentenced To 30 Years; Judge Scolds Trevor Cook’s Key Rainmaker For Wordplay

    recommendedreading1UPDATED 7:52 A.M. ET (U.S.A.) The Star Tribune of Minneapolis/St. Paul is reporting that Jason Bo-Alan Beckman has been sentenced to 30 years in the $194 million Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme and that the sentencing judge scolded Beckman for using the English language as a weapon against investors he harmed.

    Beckman was Cook’s key rainmaker in a colossal scam aimed at senior citizens and people of faith.

    From the Star Tribune (italics added):

    “You have used the English language to do violence to so many,” Davis told Beckman. “It is not a gun. It is worse than a gun.”

    Fellow Cook pitchmen Pat Kiley and Gerald Durand also are scheduled to be sentenced today.

    Beckman’s sentence is five years longer than the term Cook received in 2010.

     

     

  • Prosecution Asks Court To Impose Life Sentence On Jason Bo-Alan Beckman, Pitchman For Trevor Cook Ponzi Scheme; Beckman Says He Should Serve 364 Days And Then Become A Professional Speaker

    “The nature and circumstances of this offense and Mr. Beckman’s history and characteristics, viewed together, cry out for a life sentence. With respect to Mr. Beckman, nothing less than a liberty-ending sentence would reflect the seriousness of this offense, promote respect for the law and provide just punishment. But perhaps most importantly, Mr. Beckman must be locked up for the rest of his life because he is a very dangerous individual who is certain to hurt people if he is ever released.” — From prosecution sentencing memo for convicted swindler Jason Bo-Alan Beckman, a pitchman of the Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme, Dec. 11, 2012

    EDITOR’S NOTE: The $194 million Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme is believed to be the second-largest scam of its sort in Minnesota history, trailing only Tom Petters’ epic, $3.65 billion caper. Cook was sentenced to 25 years. Prosecutors in the office of U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones now are asking a federal judge to sentence convicted Cook pitchman Jason Bo-Alan Beckman to life in prison — or 411 years. In essence, prosecutors are arguing that Beckman was even worse than Cook, a reprobate drunkard who spent victims’ money on booze, strippers and an enormous mansion, and that Beckman piled on crimes targeted at elderly victims even as he helped Cook steal people into poverty.

    ** _____________________________________ **

    UPDATED 5:20 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) The Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme targeted at senior citizens and conservative Christians never has received the national media attention it deserves. But the Cook case is back in the news today.

    Man, is it ever . . .

    For starters, it became public yesterday that convicted Cook pitchman Jason Bo-Alan Beckman apparently believes he should spend only 364 days in prison “followed by three years of probation requiring 2000 community service hours.”

    While on probation and performing his community service, Beckman contended, he would “devote” himself “to speaking to financial firms and investors about what to do and what not to do.”

    And as an extra carrot for a lenient sentence, “Beckman would arrange for the immediate delivery of a check for $19,000,000 for payment to victims.”

    The Star Tribune of Minneapolis/St. Paul broke the news this morning about Beckman’s apparent belief he could make multiple felony convictions go away with a wrist slap, by using his checkbook as a lure to victims and by turning himself into a professional speaker on the subject of avoiding the perils of intercontinental financial crime.

    One victim who contacted the PP Blog today questioned whether Beckman was having a pipe dream about having $19 million. A court-appointed receiver has been policing up money from the scheme since 2009. Since becoming implicated in the Cook scheme, Beckman has become known for offering up bizarre constructions.

    He “had the temerity to testify that the money he stole from” an elderly couple “constituted his ‘earnings,’” prosecutors said yesterday. And he also divined a construction by which he was the “top ranked” portfolio manager in the United States “based on a Morningstar comparative study,” they asserted.

    To say the prosecution wasn’t impressed by Beckman’s opinion on how justice might best be served perhaps is the greatest understatement in the history of Ponzi-scheme prosecutions worldwide.

    Beckman, 42, deserves life in prison — or, as a technical matter 4,932 months or 411 years, according to prosecutors.

    “Mr. Beckman is a man with no semblance of a conscience who exudes in his conduct and affairs a sense of great entitlement,” prosecutors argued. “Entitlement to make untrue, grandiose claims about himself. Entitlement to groom the trust of vulnerable persons and then to violate that trust. Entitlement to steal his victims’ money and to use it for luxury items for himself. Entitlement to misuse professionals to cloak his schemes with a skein of legitimacy. Entitlement, when caught, to lie to everybody – the press, his victims, hired attorneys, and this Court – doggedly and repeatedly, about what he knew and when he knew it. To all that appears, Mr. Beckman’s entire life has been deeply suffused with sociopathy. In Mr. Beckman’s mind, the rules simply do not apply to him.”

    In 2011, the SEC memorably described Beckman as guilty of “contumacious disobedience” for his manipulation of victims and the courts. The SEC made the claim after criminal prosecutors asserted that Beckman stole millions of dollars from an elderly husband and wife now in their nineties and tried to make it appear as though the wife — a stroke victim with “hemispheric paralysis” — had become his business partner.

    Beckman sold two life-insurance policies on the woman’s “then 92-year old husband” for about $3.9 million, and then converted “the proceeds of that sale for his own benefit,” prosecutors alleged last year.

    As a companion fraud scheme that flowed from Beckman’s role in the Cook Ponzi, Beckman tried to dupe the National Hockey League in a deal that would make him a part owner of the Minnesota Wild, prosecutors said.

    And even as he was stealing from people now in their nineties and confined to a nursing home while trying to run a scam on the NHL and his own attorneys, Beckman “almost completely wiped out the Arthur W. Quiggle [Family] Trust,” prosecutors said.

    “In 2007, without authorization, he sold $3.4 million of its low-basis, high-dividend paying stock, funneling the proceeds to the currency program,” prosecutors said. “This triggered enormous capital gains within the trust and wiped out most of the trust’s dividend income, which defeated the trust’s purpose of providing income to the Quiggle family. Then, in July of 2008, just weeks after several attorneys warned Mr. Beckman that the currency program was illegal and a likely Ponzi scheme, Mr. Beckman caused the trust to borrow $3.7 million against its remaining marketable stocks and stole all of it. Again, much of it ended up paying off huge deficits incurred in Mr. Beckman’s name at various trading houses to buoy his chances of becoming an owner of the Wild.”

    Beckman is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 3.

     

  • DEVELOPING STORY: CFTC Seeks Asset Freeze Amid Allegations Of Fraud Against Russell R. Wasendorf Sr. Of Peregrine Financial Group Inc.; Wasendorf Reportedly Attempted To Kill Himself Yesterday; Trevor Cook Ponzi Victims At Risk Of Getting Fleeced Twice

    EDITOR’S NOTE: The PP Blog first became aware of reports about the suicide bid of Russell R. Wasendorf Sr. last night, after being contacted by a reader who was defrauded in the Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme. Wasendorf apparently sought to take his own life on the sparkling Cedar Falls, Iowa, property of Peregrine Financial Group Inc., the company he founded in 1990 in Chicago. A deeply disturbing, multipronged mystery has emerged . . .

    ** ___________________________________ **

    Russell R. Wasendorf Sr.

    After a reported suicide bid yesterday, Russell R. Wasendorf Sr. is said to be comatose today. Regulators now say that more than $200 million in customer funds is missing from Peregrine Financial Group Inc. (PFG). By law, the customer money was supposed to have been segregated and separately accounted for.

    “The whereabouts of the funds is currently unknown,” the CFTC said today in a court filing in Chicago that accused Wasendorf and PFG of fraud and sought an asset freeze.

    Those alarming words followed on the heels of an emergency enforcement action yesterday by the National Futures Association, which alleged that Wasendorf “may have falsified bank records” to create the impression that PFG had about $400 million in segregated accounts in late June.

    Of the $400 million, $225 million purportedly was held at U.S. Bank.

    But when NFA checked with U.S. Bank yesterday, it learned that only about $5 million was on deposit, according to the emergency filing.

    Wasendorf is a member of NFA’s Futures Commission Merchant Advisory Committee with a term ending in February 2015, according to NFA’s website. He’s now effectively been accused of fraud by the same organization he purportedly served as a committee member.

    Whatever fraud was taking place at PFG, NFA and CFTC now say, appears to date back at least to February 2010. And that fraud, according to the NFA filing, appears to have carried over into both this year and last.

    PFG does business online as PFGBest at PFGBest.com. The website features a photo of PFG’s glistening headquarters building in rural Cedar Falls, Iowa.

    The building near the small city of about 40,000 nestled in America’s heartland, however, may belie the reality at PFG.

    In February 2012, R.J. Zayed, the court-appointed receiver in the Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme case in Minnesota, sued PFG. Among the allegations was that the company turned a blind eye to Cook’s Forex fraud and checkered history with NFA.

    Cook’s Ponzi scheme gathered about $194 million and rendered some investors destitute. About $30 million of that sum was lost in trading accounts at PFG, according to the receiver’s lawsuit.

    PFG, according to the lawsuit, permitted Cook to open, manage and maintain trading accounts “in the face of overwhelming red flags of fraud or insolvency.”

    Cook is now two years into a 25-year prison sentence for his Ponzi scheme, which has led to criminal charges and convictions of pitchmen Jason Bo-Alan Beckman, Gerald Durand and former radio huckster Pat Kiley.

    During the same month Zayed sued PFG, the company agreed to settle an earlier NFA complaint in which it was accused of failing to diligently supervise introducing brokers. One of the respondents in the case was Russell R. Wasendorf Jr., Wasendorf’s son. Wasendorf Jr. is the president and chief operating officer of PFGBest and founded its Forex division, according to the PFGBest website.

    The company agreed to pay $700,000 to settle the case with no acknowledgment of wrongdoing, according to NFA.

    About five months later, Wasendorf Sr. was accused of fraud. Details remain sketchy. It is unclear how much — if any — of the fraud for which he now stands accused is related to the Cook fraud.

    What is clear is that Cook himself  was in trouble at least two prior times with NFA, with the self-regulatory organization alleging in 2005 that he manipulated an elderly woman and caused her to liquidate a $100,000 annuity with which she already was earning an annual return of 8.75 percent.

    Cook told her she could earn more through him, according to the NFA complaint.

    NFA documentation in that case references an entity known as Private Financial Group which, curiously, also used the acronym PFG, the same acronym used by Peregrine Financial Group.

    Cook’s Ponzi scheme was exposed in 2009.

  • RECOMMENDED READING: [BULLETINS]: 3 Trevor Cook Ponzi Scheme Pitchmen Found Guilty

    The Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press are reporting that Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme pitchmen Jason Bo-Alan Beckman, Pat Kiley and Gerald Durand have been found guilty in federal court in Minnesota.

    Read breaking coverage at the Star Tribune.

    Read breaking coverage at the Pioneer Press.

    The PP Blog will have more on the verdicts at a later time . . .

  • Forex Version Of ‘Mad Men’ Comes To Minnesota: Bo Beckman, Pat Kiley, Gerald Durand Trial Begins This Week; 3 Accused Hucksters Were Associates Of Ponzi Schemer Trevor Cook

    If you’re a fan of “Mad Men,” the award-winning AMC television drama now back on the air after a 17-month absence, you’ve seen the cigarettes, the boozing and the debauchery weekly. (Perhaps not only in the show itself, but also in AMC’s promos for the series, a key element of which is the tagline “DEBAUCHERY IS BACK.”)

    “Mad Men” is a carefully crafted period piece about the advertising business as it existed at the fictional, New York-based Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce agency on Madison Avenue in the 1960s. The show is utterly believable: The audience can’t wait to see what the gifted and self-absorbed fools running the shop will do next. It’s a safe bet, though, that whatever they do will involve a vice.

    Something reminiscent of “Mad Men” is coming to the Minneapolis/St. Paul region this week. Indeed,  the real-life Forex fraud trials of Bo Beckman, Pat Kiley and Gerald Durand are scheduled to get under way Thursday. All three men are figures in Trevor Cook’s $194 million Ponzi caper, believed to be the second greatest financial crime in Minnesota history behind the epic, $3.65 billion fraud of Tom Petters.

    Cook, an aficionado of life’s dark alleys, pleaded guilty two years ago and was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison. In a sense, the Cook case demonstrates that debauchery still is practiced in American business, though perhaps a bit less naturally than in the decade depicted in “Mad Men.”

    We highly recommend this pretrial summary by the Star Tribune, which reports that the government has referenced booze, drugs, strippers and prostitutes in court filings — and a defense lawyer is worried that prosecutors will put on a “stripper-centric” case.

     

  • BULLETIN: Feds Say Bo Beckman, Trevor Cook Ponzi Scheme Figure, Tried To Dupe National Hockey League In Bid To Acquire Interest In Minnesota Wild — And Used Funds Stolen From Elderly Couple And Others To Do It

    BULLETIN: A new indictment has been returned in the case of Jason Bo-Alan Beckman, Gerald Durand and Pat Kiley — all figures in the Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme that allegedly gathered $194 million and one was of the largest financial crimes in Minnesota history.

    Among the stunning new allegations is that Beckman tried to inflate his net worth to dupe the National Hockey League in a bid to acquire an ownership interest in the NHL’s Minnesota Wild franchise and that money stolen from investors — including senior citizens now in their nineties — was used in Beckman’s unsuccessful effort to gain a share of the team.

    Cook, now serving a 25-year prison sentence for ruining investors in his colossal Ponzi caper, provided Beckman $5 million in commingled funds of investors duped by his currency-trading scheme for “use in his bid for ownership in the Minnesota Wild,” according to the indictment.

    During his 2008 bid, Beckman retained local counsel in Minnesota and the services of certified public accountants to assist him in preparing materials for the NHL.

    Beckman’s own attorney, according to the indictment, warned him that the currency program was “riddled with illegalities,” including “the illegal sale of unregistered securities, inadequate or misleading disclosure to [victim investors], both about the products and about the fees, and transactions by unlicensed persons and entities,” according to the indictment.

    The attorney further warned that the currency program needed to be discontinued and that investors’ funds needed to be returned, according to the indictment.

    Regardless, Beckman pressed on, according to the indictment.

    His activities to dupe the NHL have led to two mail-fraud charges for mailings in May and October of 2008, according to the indictment.

    In December 2011, the PP Blog reported that federal prosecutors asserted that Beckman had sought to address a whopping shortfall in a trading account and prop up the monumental fraud by stealing about $3.9 million from the elderly couple.

    The indictment returned yesterday alleges that money belonging to those two victims was part of a commingled pool of funds used to trick the NHL.

    Beckman sold two life-insurance policies on the woman’s “then 92-year old husband” for about $3.9 million, and then converted “the proceeds of that sale for his own benefit,” prosecutors alleged in December.

    The woman had suffered a stroke, resides with her husband at an assisted-living facility and suffers from partial paralysis on her left side, prosecutors alleged in December.

    Beckman’s theft of about $3.9 million from the elderly couple also led to a charge of income-tax evasion, according to the indictment.

    The accused schemer knew the money he stole constituted income, but he channeled it through various entities and ignored advice from a tax-return preparer to file return for the 2008 tax year — the same year he tried to dupe the NHL, according to the indictment.

    The indictment also alleges that Beckman filed a false return in 2009 that claimed a Ponzi-scheme loss of nearly $1.5 million.

    Just a year after he was trying to impress the NHL with his purported financial worth and using stolen funds to do it, Beckman claimed his 2009 income was “-6.607,” according to the indictment.

  • UPDATE: Criminal Prosecutors Say Jason Bo-Alan Beckman Stole Nearly $4 Million From Elderly Husband And Wife; Wife A Stroke Victim With ‘Hemispheric Paralysis,’ According To Court Records; Beckman’s Manipulations Amount To ‘Contumacious Disobedience,’ SEC Says

    UPDATE: Facing a margin deficit of more than $10 million and at risk of having his trading account closed in February 2008, Jason Bo-Alan Beckman — a figure in the Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme — sought to address the whopping shortfall and prop up the monumental fraud by stealing about $3.9 million from an elderly couple, federal prosecutors in Minnesota now say.

    Separately, a federal judge has denied Beckman’s bid for the court to release $3,000 for living expenses. Chief Judge Michael J. Davis ruled Beckman could not have the money after receiver R.J. Zayed and the SEC claimed Beckman had failed to repay an earlier loan of more than $5,120 made to him from receivership proceeds and had shown no proof that $1,248 of that sum had gone to pay child-support obligations as required.

    Beckman, 41, has been charged both civilly and criminally, amid allegations he was a central figure in Cook’s $194 million fraud, believed to among the largest in Minnesota history. Victims have complained that Beckman is thumbing his nose at them, and prosecutors say he “has provided shifting and inconsistent rationalizations” for his conduct.

    The SEC chose a different phrase to describe Beckman’s alleged manipulations of victims and the courts: contumacious disobedience. (See definition below.)

    In shocking new allegations, criminal prosecutors said Beckman stole millions of dollars from an elderly husband and wife now in their nineties and tried to make it appear as though the wife — a stroke victim with “hemispheric paralysis” — had become his business partner.

    Beckman sold two life-insurance policies on the woman’s “then 92-year old husband” for about $3.9 million, and then converted “the proceeds of that sale for his own benefit,” prosecutors alleged.

    He told neither the wife nor the husband about the sale, but later claimed that the woman — described by prosecutors as “C.O.” — had become an investor in Oxford Private Client Group, an advisory firm controlled by Beckman that allegedly fed Cook’s Ponzi.

    “Put differently,” prosecutors alleged, “Beckman now claims that C.O., who was a stroke victim in her eighties, knowingly contributed millions of dollars to the Oxford Private Client Group capital so that she could become Beckman’s partner in high finance.”

    The woman, prosecutors said, resides with her husband at an assisted-living facility and suffers from partial paralysis on her left side.

    She “can transfer herself from one place to another only with significant assistance,” prosecutors said.

    Prosecutors interviewed the woman at the facility last month and now are seeking court approval to take her formal deposition at the facility and preserve it for trial, saying it was “doubtful that she would be able to give live testimony in a federal courtroom without great hardship to herself.”

    Prosecutors argued that she was a “critical witness” who’d told them that “Beckman arranged for the purchase of the life insurance policies” on her husband’s life in 2005, telling the couple that he would sell the policies “at a substantial profit.”

    But Beckman “subsequently told her that the policies had no value,” prosecutors said. “She reported that Beckman did not tell her that he sold the policies or that their sale had generated almost $4 million in proceeds. She reported that she certainly did not give Beckman permission to use the proceeds. Perhaps most importantly, she reported that she never purchased an interest in the Oxford Private Client Group. On this point she was unequivocal.”

    In successfully arguing against the release of funds to Beckman, the SEC said his victims “face a dire situation.”

    “The Court has already accommodated Beckman by ordering that some of the limited, frozen funds be advanced to him,” the SEC argued. “Beckman has returned the Court’s leniency with contumacious disobedience.”

    See definition of “contumacious” here.

  • SEC Says Former Radio Host Pat Kiley Is ‘Frustrating The Search For Truth About His Involvement In A $190+ Million Fraud’

    One of the central figures in the Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme civil case is stonewalling investigators and frustrating efforts to get to the truth, the SEC claims in new court filings.

    Former radio talk-show host Pat Kiley, who was named a defendant in the SEC action filed in November 2009, “has produced no documents, and he has answered no interrogatories,” the SEC said.

    Kiley was 71 when the SEC case was filed, according to court records.

    The agency has asked Chief U.S. District Judge Michael J. Davis of the District of Minnesota to order Kiley to turn over discovery documents that were due “six weeks ago” in mid-March.

    Kiley, though, claims he has turned over the materials, according to court filings. But the SEC said it has not received the materials.

    Instead, the agency said, Kiley sought to “turn the tables” on the Commission by serving it requests of his own.

    “On March 18 — one day before his responses were due — Kiley took the Commission’s requests, tweaked the language, and served them back on the Commission,” the agency said. “That is, Kiley redirected the Commission’s requests back at the Commission, apparently under the mistaken belief that the ball is now in the Commission’s court.”

    But “needless to say,” the agency said, “discovery is not a game of tag — a party cannot avoid answering discovery by serving requests of his own.”

    Kiley next blamed health problems, including “arthritis and tremors in both hands,” for missing deadlines, the agency said.

    “Arthritis is not the real reason for his failure to respond,” the agency said. “Indeed, hand tremors did not prevent him from serving 10 interrogatories and 25 document requests on the Commission on March 18. Arthritis also did not prevent him from litigating the issue of his attorneys’ fees, including the filing of a Motion to Refund Fee . . . and a 12-page affidavit.”

    Kiley, the SEC said, has appeared at three hearings since October 2010, showing that “he litigates — when he wants to.”

    Participating in discovery, however, has been another matter, the SEC said.

    “By refusing to provide information, Kiley is frustrating the search for truth about his involvement in a $190+ million fraud,” the agency said.

    Here is a partial list of what the SEC is seeking from Kiley, according to court filings:

    • All documents that support the statements made in your Answer filed on October 14, 2010 (Docket No. 535). For example, produce: (1) the “letters of gratitude,” “emails of gratitude,” and “letters, cards, and phone calls” from investors, including the “room full of these tokens of clients’ gratitude.”
    • Documents relating to the “customer service” that you performed or experienced.
    • Documents relating to the notion that “everything [you] had on earth was invested in the program,” that you were “fully invested” in the currency program, and that you “lost everything” you owned in the program.
    • Documents relating to the notion that you “liquidated [customer] accounts” and returned customer funds “against their will” when you “felt they did not fit anymore.”
    • Documents relating to the notion that you “predicted accurately (9 months in advance), the failure of banks, investment houses, and the coming real estate foreclosure market.”
    • Documents relating to the “commissions” and other funds received from Trevor Cook or the Currency Program.
    • Documents relating to the “[p]reparation of and research for the radio program.”
    • Documents relating to application materials submitted by investors.

    Thee SEC also asked Kiley to:

    • Produce the “piles and piles of documentary evidence” that you mentioned at the Rule 26(f) conference with Magistrate Judge Noel on December 16, 2010.
    • Produce all affidavits, declarations, responses, and summaries of any kind that you have prepared relating to the Currency Program or to the allegations of the Complaint. This request includes, but is not limited to, the so-called “60-page” affidavit or summary that you prepared about this case, as represented to various investors.
    • Produce all documents that refer or relate to any due diligence of whatever kind that you performed about the Currency Program from January, 2006 to July, 2009. This request includes, but is not limited to, any investigation to confirm whether (i) the investor’s funds would be placed – and were in fact placed – in segregated accounts; (ii) the investor’s funds would be used – and were in fact used – to trade foreign currencies; (iii) the foreign currency trading would generate – and did in fact generate – annual returns of 10% to 12%; (iv) the foreign currency trading involved little or no risk; (v) the investor’s principal would be safe and could be withdrawn at any time; and (vi) Trevor Cook, Bo Beckman, Chris Pettengill, and Jerry Durand were competent and trustworthy.
    • Produce all documents that refer or relate to communications with investors about the Currency Program. This request includes, but is not limited to, all correspondence with investors, and all representations to investors about the Currency Program.
    • Produce all documents that refer or relate to investments by investors in the Currency Program. This request includes, but is not limited to, agreements, applications, account statements, marketing material, so-called “pitch sheets,” and so on.
    • Produce all documents that refer or relate to the content of the “Follow the Money” radio program. This request includes, but is not limited to, recordings or transcripts of broadcasts. This request also includes, but is not limited to, any notes, research, preparatory material, or summaries relating to any broadcasts, as well as any communications with listeners about the broadcasts.
    • Produce all documents that refer or relate to any compensation of any kind that you received relating to the “Follow the Money” radio program.
    • Produce all documents that refer or relate to the content of www.patkiley.com. This request includes, but is not limited to, any information posted on the website, as well as the computer server that contained the contents of the website.
    • Produce all documents that refer or relate to communications with Trevor Cook, Bo Beckman, Chris Pettengill, Jerry Durand, or any officer or employee of the Universal Entities or the Oxford Entities about the Currency Program.
    • Produce all documents relating to any funds (e.g., cash, checks, or cash equivalents) that you received from Trevor Cook, Bo Beckman, Chris Pettengill, Jerry Durand, or any officer or employee of the Universal Entities or the Oxford Entities.
    • Produce all agreements between you and Trevor Cook, Bo Beckman, Chris Pettengill, Jerry Durand, the Universal Entities or the Oxford Entities.
    • Produce all documents relating to any personal investment by you in the Currency Program at any time.
    • Produce all advertisements or other marketing material relating to the Currency Program, the Universal Entities, or the Oxford Entities.
    • Produce all documents referring or relating to your education, professional training, and experience in financial and economic matters. This request includes, but is not limited to, all documents referring or relating to your education, professional training, and experience in the trading of securities or foreign currencies.
    • Produce all documents relating to any communications that you had with anyone about the investigation by the SEC or about the merits of this lawsuit.
    • Produce all photographs relating to the Currency Program or to the “Follow the Money” radio program. This request includes, but is not limited to, all photographs with Trevor Cook, Bo Beckman, Chris Pettengill, Jerry Durand, or any officer or employee of the Universal Entities or the Oxford Entities.
    • Produce all bank statements for accounts used by you (personal or business) from January 1, 2006 to the present.
    • Produce all phone records from January 1, 2006 to the present.
    • Produce all calendars, time entries, and diaries from January 1, 2006 to the present.
    • Produce all federal and state tax returns from January 1, 2006 to present.
    • Produce all documents cited or described in your (forthcoming) Rule 26(a) Initial Disclosures and any supplements.
    • Produce all documents that you cited in, or documents that you relied upon in preparing, your responses to any interrogatories served by the SEC.

     

  • Florida Ponzi Property Of Accused Minnesota Fraudster Bo Beckman Will Drain Cash, Receiver Says; Home With 5 Bathrooms Is ‘Under Water’ And Should Be Beckman’s Problem To Solve

    This 10-room home with five baths and a garage of nearly 1,100 sq. ft. in Florida is "under water" on its mortgage and could create a drain on the receivership estate in the Bo Beckman fraud case, according to the court-appointed receiver.

    Accused Minnesota fraudster Jason Bo-Alan Beckman’s 5,097-sq.-ft.-home with five bedrooms, five bathrooms and a roomy garage of nearly 1,100 sq. ft. in Palm City, Fla., is seriously “under water” on its mortgage and thus creates a drain on assets that are best used to compensate victims, the court-appointed receiver has advised a federal judge.

    Receiver R.J. Zayed has asked Chief U.S. District Judge Michael J. Davis for an order that would return control of the property to Beckman and his wife on the theory it is “imprudent to diminish the Receivership’s severely limited resources to continue efforts to market and/or maintain the Property.”

    The Beckmans, whose home in Minnesota is in foreclosure, owe “at least” $207,000 more than the Florida property is worth, Zayed advised Davis. The receiver noted that the mortgage has a balance of more than $707,301 and that the home may not even fetch $500,000 if sold.

    The “negative equity” should be the Beckmans’ problem, not the problem of the victims of his alleged fraud, which is part of the Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme case, Zayed argued. The SEC sued Bo Beckman earlier this month, alleging that he was a “leading” figure in Cook’s fraud and had “guaranteed” annual returns of 12 percent or greater in an international Forex scheme.

    Cook is serving a 25-year sentence in federal prison.

    Bo Beckman, according to the SEC, purchased luxury homes in three states and assembled a fleet of luxury cars. He essentially is accused of being a rainmaker for Cook by driving nearly $50 million to the $190 million fraud.

    “[T]he Receiver is not seeking to abandon the [Florida] property, but rather have the Court confirm the return the property to the Beckmans’ custody, control and possession, thereby placing at least some of the burden of unwinding the fraud on its perpetrators,” Zayed advised Davis.

  • BULLETIN: SEC Charges Jason Bo-Alan Beckman In Trevor Cook Ponzi Scheme; Judge Freezes Assets; Agency Says Investors’ Cash Used To Make Child-Support Payments And Puchase ‘Luxury Homes’ And Cars

    BULLETIN: Jason Bo-Alan “Bo” Beckman has been charged civilly by the SEC in the Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme in Minnesota and named a “leading” figure, according to court filings. The case against Beckman was brought as an action separate from the civil action against Cook, who also was charged criminally and is in federal prison serving 25 years after pleading guilty last year.

    The SEC’s complaint suggests other defendants may follow.

    “His fraud was part of a bigger scheme orchestrated by and with Trevor Cook and several associates,” the agency said, alleging that Beckman raised about $47.3 million of the $194 million gathered in the overall fraud — roughly 25 percent of the overall total. Former radio host Pat Kiley previously was charged civilly.

    Chief U.S. District Judge Michael J. Davis has frozen Beckman’s assets.

    One individual — a 41-year old nurse — submitted a sworn affidavit to Davis that Beckman promised him “guaranteed” annual returns of “12% or greater.”

    The nurse, an inexperienced investor who put $130,000 into the scheme, asserted he learned about the purported currency-trading program from Hollie Beckman, Beckman’s wife. Hollie Beckman has been named a relief defendant amid assertions she received ill-gotten gains. Her assets also have been frozen.

    Another inexperienced investor — a 60-year-old man who previously was retired but has returned to work because his life savings of nearly $750,000 were wiped out in the scheme — said in a sworn affidavit that Beckman promised him a “guaranteed”  return of 10.5 percent. Like the nurse, the man was given a tour of the Van Dusen Mansion, the landmark Minneapolis estate from which Beckman and Cook conducted business.

    This man rolled over his 401K account and liquidated his pension fund to become an investor, according to an affidavit.

    Yet-another inexperienced investor — a 62-year-old man who works as a water-plant operator — said he put $99,300 into the scheme by liquidating an account at Bear Stearns. Beckman promised him that his “fixed” account would generate about 13 percent annually, according to a sworn affidavit.

    All told, the SEC charged, “Beckman’s investors ultimately lost over $39 million by investing in the Currency Program and putting their money in his hands.” About 143 investors gave Beckman their money.

    Luz M. Aguilar, an SEC investigator, said that $85 million of the $194 million “was never invested in any type of foreign currency trading.”

    And Aguilar alleged that “the Beckmans deposited approximately $7.7 million into their personal joint accounts.” The funds originated “from accounts containing funds of investors,” according to Aguilar.

    More than $61,000 was used to make child-support payments, Aguilar alleged.

    But most of the money went to fuel an extravagant life-stlye, according to Aguilar. Here is a list of some of the spending:

    • $210,828 for automobile payments. The fleet allegedly included a 2010 Jaguar, a 2008 Land Rover, a 2006 Land Rover, a 2008 Mercedes, a 2008 Suzuki and a 2000 Mercedes.
    • $1.49 million for payments “toward the purchase” of luxury homes in Minneapolis, Texas and Florida.
    • $695,000 for credit-card payments.
    • $180,000 for a suite to watch hockey games.
    • $36,000 to “resorts.”
    • $76,000 to a country club.
    • $108,000 for cash withdrawals.
    • $224,000 for construction and repairs.
    • $997,000 for payments to seven law firms.
    • $223,000 for taxes.

    “Beckman was in a position to know the truth about the Currency Program,” the SEC charged. “He worked side-by-side with Trevor Cook at the Van Dusen mansion. Red flags waved all around him. For example, he knew — by April 2008, over a year before the scheme collapsed — that investors’ funds were pooled and were not in segregated accounts at all. He also learned from Trevor Cook that the location of investors’ funds was ‘not a black and white situation.’ The warning signs were glaring. Yet Beckman kept [quiet] — and kept taking tens of millions of dollars from investors . . .

    “Now that the Currency Program is over — and the money flow has stopped — the Beckmans apparently are struggling to make ends meet. Their expansive home in the Minneapolis suburbs is in foreclosure,” the SEC said.

    The SEC asked Davis to halt a sheriff’s sale set for March 14, and the judge issued an order blocking it.

    Even though Beckman had serious doubts about Cook, he kept them to himself, not sharing with investors information they needed to make informed decisions, the SEC charged.