NFA

CNBC’s “American Greed” will be in Minneapolis today to begin filming an episode on the massive Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme that was targeted at senior citizens and conservative Christians and rendered some victims penniless, a source told the PP Blog. Cook’s scheme gathered about $194 million. It collapsed in 2009. Money that potentially could go […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: The PP Blog first became aware of reports about the suicide bid of Russell R. Wasendorf Sr. last night, after being contacted by a reader who was defrauded in the Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme. Wasendorf apparently sought to take his own life on the sparkling Cedar Falls, Iowa, property of Peregrine Financial Group […]

Charles G. Martin has been sentenced to 17 years in federal prison — and fellow Forex Ponzi schemer John E. Walsh has been sentenced to more than 12 years — in a case in which investors’ money went to pay for strippers, fine meals, fine hotels, a piano, high-end electronics, artwork, jewelry, flashy cars and […]

URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: UPDATED 8:14 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has gone to federal courts in four different states and simultaneously filed actions against 11 separate companies in the second phase of an enforcement sweep. The firms, some of which conduct business offshore but allegedly use webhosting companies or other […]

BULLETIN: Vincent McCrudden, who was arrested in January amid allegations he threatened to kill 47 regulators and government officials, has pleaded guilty to two counts of transmitting threats to kill. McCrudden, 50, faces up to 10 years in prison. He has been jailed since his arrest in New Jersey. “Mr. McCrudden made bone-chilling and graphic […]

BULLETIN: In the third such action in the United States since March 30, the CFTC has gone to federal court in Florida to block what it described as a “precious metals” scam that incorporated fictitious trading. Charged with fraud in the case were Sammy J. Goldman of Delray Beach, Fla., and Harry Robert Tanner Jr. […]

BULLETIN: David A. Smith, who presided over a $220 million Forex fraud known as OLINT, has pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. Smith, 41, is a citizen of Jamaica. He “executed a Ponzi scheme to defraud over 6,000 investors located in the Middle District of Florida and elsewhere out […]

The assets of an Arizona man who allegedly mixed a Forex Ponzi scheme with a cash-gifting scheme and claimed his software system let clients “profit every time” from trades have been frozen by a federal judge after the CFTC filed an emergency court action. Anthony Eugene Linton of Tucson told investors that entrusting their money […]

A New York man sued by the CFTC last month for registration violations has been arrested on criminal charges of threatening to kill 47 current or former market regulators, federal prosecutors said. Vincent P. McCrudden, 49, who recently had been living in Singapore, was arrested yesterday by the FBI at Newark Liberty International Airport after […]

BULLETIN: Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) traveled to the Turks And Caicos Islands to take accused Ponzi schemer David A. Smith into custody. Smith has been transported to the United States and is jailed in Florida. Smith, who was serving a prison term in the islands for fraud and conspiracy, became the […]

Some of the investors in the Trevor Cook/Pat Kiley Ponzi scheme are none too pleased with Cook’s plea deal, which may place a ceiling of 25 years on any prison sentence he receives while tens of millions of dollars remain missing. One investor has told the PP Blog that a group of investors is seeking […]