The FBI has captured Perry and Rachelle Griggs, the fugitive Ponzi couple accused of running a scam while Perry Griggs was a federal prisoner in Nevada. The arrest was made in Kingman, Ariz., yesterday.
Perry and Rachelle Griggs were indicted in October for wire fraud and mail fraud. They had been missing since January 2010. Perry Griggs had been released from prison in 2008. An investigation later revealed that the scam had begun while he was in custody and was directed largely at Hawaii residents.
They operated a company known as Aloha Trading. The couple also has been charged by the CFTC. Rachelle Griggs was accused of soliciting money from families of her husband’s fellow prisoners.
The FBI said the manhunt for the fugitive couple was “intense,” and used websites, national news coverage and “electronic highway billboards” to dial up the heat on the alleged Ponzi schemers.
In December 2009, Rita Gosselin was indicted for racketeering in Michigan. Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox said she was at the helm of a real-estate Ponzi scheme involving promissory notes.
In April 2010, Gosselin, 58, was alleged to have cut a monitoring device and fled the the state with her husband, Richard Gosselin, 62.
The couple was captured yesterday in Tennessee by the U.S. Marshals Service and the Humboldt Police Department.
Meanwhile, a Nevada couple charged earlier this week in a Ponzi case remains on the lam. Perry and Rachelle Griggs disappeared in January 2010.
Perry Griggs operated the scheme while he was incarcerated in federal prison for another Ponzi scheme, authorities said.
BULLETIN: UPDATED WITH INFORMATION FROM THE CFTC AT 7:03 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) Perry and Rachelle Griggs are on the lam after running a Ponzi scheme while Perry Griggs was a federal prisoner in Nevada, the FBI said.
The alleged commodities scheme consumed about $3 million and was targeted principally at inmates and family members of inmates, the FBI said.
Separately, the CFTC said Perry Griggs ran a previous Ponzi scheme that resulted in convictions for wire fraud and money-laundering, a restitution order for more than $3 million and a 96-month prison sentence. Perry Griggs began serving the sentence in 2003, but hatched the new scheme while incarcerated.
Yet-another scheme grew out of the scheme Perry Griggs hatched from prison, according to the CFTC. If the allegations are true, it means that Perry Griggs has been at the center of at least three fraud schemes since 2003, and launched two of them while in federal custody.
The scheme for which Perry Griggs began serving time in 2003 involved coffee futures, the CFTC said. Even as he was serving time, Perry Griggs executed trades for the new scheme from prison by using the Internet and a telephone, according to court filings.
Perry Griggs and his wife lost investors’ money in the new scheme and made Ponzi-style payments to cover up the fraud, while also stealing about $1 million to pay “for personal expenses, including luxury car leases, renting a home in Hawaii, purchasing jewelry and chartering a private jet,” the CFTC said.
The couple went missing from a halfway house after Perry Griggs’ release from prison. Perry Griggs was on parole for the earlier Ponzi scheme when he fled while the second scheme was unraveling, the CFTC said.
Perry Griggs was housed “with a large number of inmates from Hawaii,” the FBI said. He was released from prison in late 2008, and went missing with his wife from Las Vegas in January 2010.
Indictments against the husband and wife were returned by a federal grand jury in Hawaii yesterday.
The FBI has launched what it described as a “national fugitive manhunt with a primary focus on the states of Nevada, Washington, and California.”
PERRY JAY GRIGGS is 49 years old, 5’10†tall, 180 pounds, with grey hair and blue eyes. He is known to have expensive tastes in sports cars, high-end clothing, cigars, and golf, the FBI said.
RACHELLE LOUISE GRIGGS, also known as RACHELLE RUTLEDGE, is 42 years old, 5’4†tall, 150 pounds with blonde hair and green eyes.
Anyone recognizing PERRY and RACHELLE GRIGGS or having information as to their current location is asked to call the Honolulu FBI at 808-566-4300.
Perry Griggs also spent time in federal prisons in California and Texas. The Ponzi that put the couple on the lam operated through a scam company known as Aloha Trading Co., which purported to be in the business of trading commodities, the FBI said.
Meanwhile, the CFTC said investors in the second scheme were lured by the promise of high returns. Some investors refinanced their homes and liquidated retirement accounts to invest with Perry and Rachelle Griggs.
A third scheme grew from the second scheme and involved a company known as Paradise Trading LLC, the CFTC said.
