FBI

Yesterday was another bad day for the legal profession’s noble members: They once again had to bear headlines about fraud schemes allegedly operated by colleagues past and present. In Kansas, attorney Robert M. Telthorst, 52, of Topeka, was charged with wire fraud and money-laundering amid allegations he ran a Ponzi scheme for all or parts […]

After he was charged with filing false liens and other crimes and jailed near Seattle, AdSurfDaily story figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming apparently thought it prudent to sue President Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Leaming, 56, advanced a theory that Obama was not born in the United States, was not […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: In August 2011, the FBI warned of debt-elimination schemes advanced by purported “sovereign citizens.” The story below outlines a “bonded promissory notes” scheme advanced in Missouri by Denny Ray Hardin. It is worth noting that AdSurfDaily figure Kenneth Wayne Leaming is jailed near Seattle awaiting trial in a case that alleges he issued […]

AdSurfDaily figures Todd Disner and Dwight Owen Schweitzer should not be permitted to reopen their lawsuit against the government for alleged misdeeds in bringing the ASD Ponzi-scheme case in August 2008, government lawyers said in court filings today. Moreover, the bid by Disner and Schweitzer to force U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer of the District […]

“The audacity of this defendant’s alleged scheme was matched by its simplicity. He solicited and obtained millions of dollars from investors and simply pocketed the money for personal use. He told investors they were funding software development, then told his development team he hadn’t found investors.” — FBI Acting Assistant Director-in-Charge Mary Galligan, Oct. 3, […]

BULLETIN: A federal judge in Texas was the target of a murder-for-hire plot by a purported “sovereign citizen,” the FBI said. Phillip Monroe Ballard, 71, already was jailed at the Fort Worth Federal Correctional Institution when he solicited the killing of U.S. District Judge John McBryde, the office of U.S. Attorney Sarah R. Saldaña of […]

What: Investor Fraud Summits. Where/When: Stamford, Conn. (today from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. EDT at the University of Connecticut – Stamford Campus); Nashville, Tenn. (Oct. 4 from 8:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. EDT at Vanderbilt University Law School’s Flynn Auditorium located at 131 21st Avenue South) ; San Francisco (Oct. 9, in Walnut Creek, […]

From time to time over the years, readers have commented that some of the stories published by the PP Blog read like fiction. Did AdSurfDaily Ponzi schemer Andy Bowdoin, for example, really compare the U.S. Secret Service to “Satan” and the 9/11 terrorists? The answer is yes. But if the answer weren’t disturbing enough, any […]

UPDATED 2:38 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) Klein Michael Thaxton now is in police custody, CBS News is reporting. Below, our earlier brief . . . ** ______ ** Pittsburgh police, including a SWAT team, are at the scene of a possible hostage situation inside the 16th-floor offices of CW Breitsman Associates LLC, a third-party administrator of […]

BULLETIN: (UPDATED 5:35 P.M. EDT U.S.A.) The CFTC has gone to federal court in the Eastern District of Missouri, alleging that Grahame Rhodes of St. Louis was at the helm of a decade-long, commodity-pool Ponzi scheme aimed at family and friends. Rhodes is charged with misappropriating the entire pool while “pretending to be a successful, […]

“Turner is alleged to have attempted to pay his own taxes with a fictitious $300 million bond and to have assisted others in attempting to pay their taxes with fictitious bonds purporting to be worth amounts ranging from $10 million to $100 billion.” — U.S. Department of Justice, Sept. 18, 2012 BULLETIN: James Timothy Turner, […]