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Tag: New Zealand Serious Fraud Office

  • David Robert Gilmour Ross, New Zealand Ponzi Swindler, Sentenced To Nearly 11 Years In Prison

    ponzinews1David Robert Gilmour Ross, the 63-year-old architect of New Zealand’s largest Ponzi scheme, has been sentenced to 10 years and 10 months in prison, New Zealand’s Serious Fraud Office announced.

    “More than 1,200 client accounts were affected by Mr Ross’ scheme, so his offending has had a devastating impact on many lives,” said SFO Director Julie Read. “The financial losses are not only significant to those individuals but they will have a flow on effect as those investors’ dealings in the New Zealand economy are impacted. It is important the SFO remains vigilant in fighting financial crime so we don’t see a repetition of this sort of scheme.”

    Investors took a bath for about $NZ115 million, roughly $US95.36 million. Through accounting deceptions and false statements, “Mr Ross reported false profits of $[NZ]351 million,” SFO said. That’s roughly $US291 million.

    Ross engaged in the “purported trading of the fictitious securities,” SFO said, noting that he admitted to “knowingly making a false declaration to [the Financial Markets Authority] for the purposes of obtaining authorisation as an Authorised Financial Adviser (AFA) and producing documents to FMA which he knew to be false or misleading.”

    A resident of Wellington, Ross pleaded guilty in August to false accounting, theft by person in special relationship, providing a financial service when he was not registered for that service, making false statements and producing false documents, SFO said.

    Ross was associated with an entity known as Ross Asset Management (RAM).

    “Large portions of client portfolios shown as invested through a broker ‘Bevis Marks’ were fictitious and never existed,” SFO said.

  • Now, A ‘Fraudulent $53 Million Worldwide Off-Exchange Forex Scheme,’ CFTC Alleges; Agency Charges Australian Resident Senen Pousa, U.S. Residents Joel Friant And Michael Dillard, Along With ‘Investment Intelligence Corp.’ And ‘Elevation Group Inc.’

    EDITOR’S NOTE: In a statement on the allegations against Senen Pousa, Joel Friant, Michael Dillard and their companies, the CFTC pointedly stressed that international agencies cooperated in a probe and that the alleged scammers created victims in multiple nations . . .

    The CFTC has gone to federal court in the Western District of Texas, alleging that Senen Pousa of Australia and Joel Friant of Bellingham, Wash., were running a “fraudulent $53 million worldwide off-exchange Forex scheme” through an Australian enterprise known as Investment Intelligence Corp. (IIC).

    Also charged in the alleged caper were Michael Dillard and Elevation Group Inc. of Austin, Texas.

    “The scheme allegedly accepted at least $53 million from at least 960 clients worldwide, including at least 697 clients in the United States, and clients in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and Singapore, among other countries. None of the defendants has ever been registered with the CFTC,” the CFTC charged.

    U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel of the Western District of Texas issued an emergency freeze of the assets of Pousa, Friant and IIC and prohibited the destruction of books and records, the CFTC said.

    Cooperating in the probe were the Australian Securities & Investments Commission, the U.K. Financial Services Authority, the Hungarian Financial Supervisory Authority, the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets, the Financial Markets Authority of New Zealand and the New Zealand Serious Fraud Office, the CFTC said.

    From a CFTC statement (italics added):

    The CFTC complaint alleges that from at least January 1, 2012 through the present IIC, through Pousa, Friant and its other agents, and defendants Dillard and Elevation Group, utilized “wealth creation” webcasts, webinars, podcasts, emails, and other online seminars via the Internet to directly and indirectly solicit actual and prospective clients worldwide to open forex trading accounts at IIC. The complaint further alleges that clients were promised by IIC, through Pousa, Friant, and other agents 1) a monthly return of 9 percent, 2) that IIC’s managed forex trading would risk less than 3 percent of a client’s capital per transaction, 3) that IIC was able to limit the risk inherent to forex trading by limiting its managed forex trading to 2 to 5 trades per month, and 4) that IIC has six “proprietary traders” working 24 hours a day trading clients’ funds. The CFTC complaint alleges that all of these representations to clients were false.

    On or about May 16-17, 2012, the complaint alleges that clients suffered a loss of over 60 percent of their investment, when IIC, by and through its agents, entered over 200 forex trades in each client’s account in violation of the representations made by IIC, by and through its agents.

    Also assisting the CFTC were the Texas State Securities Board, the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas, the FBI and the SEC, the CFTC said.

    Read the CFTC complaint.