FILE: Kevin Perkins appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2009. He appeared again today.
How confident are you that the HYIP you’re flogging on the Ponzi boards isn’t already under investigation by any of a number of state or federal agencies?
Court records show that the alleged Legisi HYIP Ponzi scheme (about $70 million) was under investigation by state and federal law-enforcement agencies even as promoters were pitching it. The same is true of the alleged AdSurfDaily (ASD) Ponzi scheme (about $100 million).
In Congressional testimony today, Kevin L. Perkins, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, said the agency has opened 291 “new” HYIP case this fiscal year and has 780 pending cases of high-yield fraud.
“Many of the Ponzi scheme investigations have an international nexus and have affected thousands of victims,” Perkins told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In February 2009, members of the alleged ASD scheme bizarrely asked the very same committee to investigate the prosecutors investigating the scheme — not ASD President Andy Bowdoin, the alleged schemer.
By September 2009, Bowdoin was telling members the $65.8 million the government seized from his 10 personal bank accounts belonged to them — a position that contradicted his own court filings.
Bowdoin told U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer the money belonged to him. The judge later ordered the money forfeited to the government, which is establishing a restitution fund. Bowdoin appealed.
Kevin L. Perkins of the FBI tells the Senate Judiciary Committee that the agency is investigating 1,500 cases of securities fraud and that 314 of them involve HYIP fraud in various forms.
And to think that only months ago — in February 2009 — various members of AdSurfDaily wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee trying to elicit support for Ponzi schemes. The letter-writing campaign was spearheaded by “Professor” Patrick Moriarty and pushed by the Pro-AdSurfDaily Surf’s Up forum.
But now the FBI has told the committee, led by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D.-Vermont, that it has registered a 105 percent increase in HYIP fraud and opened 314 investigations in 2009, up from 154 in 2008.
“[M]any [had] losses exceeding $100 million,” said Kevin L. Perkins, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigations Division.
Perkins said the probes cover the gamut — from the massive Ponzi scheme fraud of Bernard Madoff to smaller variations of the Ponzi scheme.
“These schemes use money collected from new victims, rather than profits from an underlying business venture, to pay the high rates of return promised to earlier investors,” Perkins told the Committee. “This arrangement gives investors the impression there is a legitimate, money-making enterprise behind the fraudster’s story; but in reality, unwitting investors are the only source of funding.”
During his testimony, Perkins also referenced “prime-bank schemes” in which victims are told that “certain financial instruments such as notes, letters of credit, debentures, or guarantees have been issued by well-known institutions such as the World Bank, and offer a risk-free opportunity with high rates of return.”
In August 2008, in a forfeiture complaint against the assets of AdSurfDaily and Golden Panda Ad Builder, federal prosecutors revealed that Golden Panda President Clarence Busby had been sued civilly by the SEC in the 1990s after he was implicated in three prime-bank schemes. At the same time, prosecutors revealed ASD President Andy Bowdoin had been arrested for felony securities fraud in Alabama during the same decade.
Despite the Ponzi allegations against ASD and the histories of Bowdoin and Busby, Surf’s Up urged the Judiciary Committee to investigate the prosecutors who brought the forfeiture cases against ASD and Golden Panda in August 2008.
“We each need to explain [to Leahy] how thousands of innocent Americans have suffered and continue to suffer because of these incredible and despicable acts” by prosecutors, Surf’s Up urged members.
Law enforcement is investigating a stunning number of securities-fraud cases, the FBI revealed.
“The FBI continues to aggressively investigate this criminal threat, and currently has more than 1,500 related securities fraud investigations,” Perkins said.
