California Ponzi schemes

URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: The SEC has gone to federal court in Los Angeles, alleging that a California man was operating a $7.5 million Ponzi scheme targeted at the Persian-Jewish community. U.S. District Judge Jacqueline H. Nguyen has issued an emergency asset freeze. Charged in the alleged affinity-fraud caper was Shervin Neman, 30, of […]

The onetime commander of the California National Guard base in Los Alamitos has pleaded guilty to mail fraud in a Ponzi scheme that defrauded 28 investors of $2.7 million, federal prosecutors said. Ret. Col. Timothy Melvin Murphy, 70, of Orange, ran his investment scam through an entity known as Capital Investors Inc., also of Orange, […]

BULLETIN: Jacquline Hoegel, an American living in American Canyon, Calif., has been charged criminally in an alleged Ponzi scheme that gathered $129.5 million, the office of U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag of the Northern District of California said. Also indicted was William Wise, a citizen of Canada. Wise, 62, formerly resided in Raleigh, N.C.  A warrant […]

BULLETIN: The SEC has gone to federal court in the Southern District of California, alleging that Steven L. Hamilton of Carlsbad was running three Ponzi schemes through three companies he set up “to solicit unsuspecting investors.” Hamilton is 42, the SEC said. One of the offers allegedly duped people into believing they were investing in […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This post contains links to recommended reading on Barry Minkow and Travis Wright — the former a classic narcissist and con man doing his second stint in federal prison after having played the redemption circuit for years, the latter a man who used other people’s money to ensconce himself in the lap of […]

BULLETIN: John Farahi, a former Los Angeles radio host who once was a member of the city council of Reno, Nev., has been indicted on dozens of counts of defrauding investors and banks out of at least $20 million, federal prosecutors in the Central District of California said. David Tamman, an attorney, was indicted amid […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: If you’ve been keeping a “Bubba Blue” notebook on ways to have your Ponzi scheme as opposed to shrimp, here is another entry . . . BULLETIN: A California man, his wife and his Indiana-based mother have been arrested in an alleged $2.5 million Ponzi scheme tied to a bogus insurance company known […]

BULLETIN: Thanh-Viet “Jeremy” Cao, the California Ponzi schemer and purported “sovereign citizen” who was sentenced in May to 30 years in federal prison for the Ponzi caper, now has been sentenced to an additional 41 months for a Nevada crime in which he filed false liens for hundreds of millions of dollars against government officials. […]

BULLETIN: A California woman has pleaded guilty to wire fraud in a Ponzi scheme in which investors were falsely told their money was being used to fund “Christian rock concerts” and to flip real estate at a profit. Lauren Baumann, 43, of Downey, was a recidivist  huckster who failed to disclose she’d been sued for fraud […]

UPDATED 4:32 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) It’s only getting stranger . . . The SEC has gone to federal court in Los Angeles and obtained an emergency asset freeze for what it described as a $4.5 million life-settlement fraud and Ponzi scheme operated by a man who spent more than $5,000 in investor funds on “cowboy […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of those stories of an investor wipeout that may leave you scratching your head and wondering if no person, institution or symbol of America is off-limits in the world of Ponzi criminals. For starters,  the scheme allegedly was targeted at least in part at Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) members in the […]