The lede in a story this morning by Neil Weinberg of Bloomberg Business:
“The U.S. requires banks to know their customers. Looks like several big ones, including Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co., may have missed getting acquainted with Daniel Fernandes Rojo Filho.”
Here’s a link to the story, titled “Ponzi Suspect’s 17 Accounts Raise Questions Over Bank Safeguards.”
The PP Blog first wrote about Filho in May 2010 in the context of the deeply disturbing Evolution Market Group/ FinanzasForex scheme. Money was linked to the narcotics trade.
As we reported more than five years ago (italics added):
Research by the PP Blog suggests the purported investment program was so sordid that promoters even claimed some of the funds were being used for the “humanitarian” purpose of assisting kidnapping victims in Colombia. In a sickening display of marketing theatrics, a claim was made that investors could “adopt” kidnapping victims for a payment of $1,000 and that the company would set aside $500 in corporate funds for each victim so that their families could have bright futures if the victims ultimately were released by their captors.
The HYIP scheme allegedly was associated with an entity known as Evolution Market Group (EMG), which purportedly had a Forex component known as FinanzasForex. Investigators alleged in January that there were schemes within schemes in a tangled web of domestic and international deception that featured dozens of bank accounts, shell companies and various fronts for money-laundering enterprises, including companies purportedly in businesses such as real estate and car washes.
The scheme was so corrupt, according to court filings, that some investors were told that, in order to leave the program whole, they had to recruit new investors, have the new investors pay them directly — and use the proceeds from the new investors to “recover” their initial outlays.
“If the banks had just Googled this guy, they would have known enough to stay away,” Evans Carter, a Framingham, Massachusetts-based attorney, told Bloomberg.
Filho’s name later would surface in the preposterous DFRF Enterprises’ scheme that has led to civil and criminal charges against him. The SEC has linked Filho to TelexFree figure Sann Rodrigues. Those ties may prove to be more troubling as the litigation winds its way through the courts.
See BehindMLM.com story dated today: “Sann Rodrigues laundered assets through DFRF Enterprises.”