securities fraud

EDITOR’S NOTE: A “program” known as Text Cash Network (TCN) that purports to share “advertising” revenue from text messages is spreading virally on the Internet. This column includes information prospective TCN members might want to consider before joining and asking others to join. There are red flags galore. Last week, the PP Blog compiled some […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: The PP Blog may have more on this developing story in the coming days. In a bizarre development, accused Ponzi schemer Andy Bowdoin of AdSurfDaily told webinar listeners yesterday that he intended to fund his criminal defense to charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities through a purported business opportunity […]

Barry Minkow, who presided over a colossal Ponzi scheme as a young man, spent seven years in federal prison and emerged to become a church pastor and tell the world he no longer was a criminal, has been charged criminally in Florida in a stock-manipulation scheme. Minkow, 44, allegedly induced law enforcement to open a […]

BULLETIN: UPDATED 9:29 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) Prosecutors have advised a federal judge that AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin and unnamed “others” traveled to Costa Rica in the spring of 2008 to get the lay of the land for an offshore autosurf that would be “another version” of ASD. The alleged trip occurred less than two years […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: The indictment in Delaware against Patrick A. Wiley of Detroit illustrates the dangers of entrusting money to a person who claims he can help you recover money lost in a securities swindle. It also illustrates that a person who claims he can help you recover money lost to a securities swindle — and […]

Perhaps he’ll be remembered best for his collection of Steiff teddy bears paid for by investors, but there now are other reasons to remember Paul Greenwood. Greenwood has pleaded guilty to swindling institutional investors, universities and pension funds in a Ponzi-like scheme. He is believed to be cooperating with prosecutors in the ongoing probe of […]

Charges against a Florida man accused of running a Ponzi scheme through a bogus wholesale grocery business known as Capitol Investments USA Inc. have been upgraded, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman of the District of New Jersey said. Nevin J. Shapiro, 41, of Miami Beach, originally was charged via criminal complaint in April with one […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: Here’s one for your Bubba Blue notebook on the various ways to have a Ponzi scheme, as opposed to shrimp. UPDATED 5:50 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) A Miami man has been charged by the SEC with gathering $40 million in a Ponzi scheme, pocketing $6 million for himself and telling investors they were helping […]

BULLETIN: Nevin K. Shapiro, the founder and president of Capitol Investments USA Inc., surrendered to authorities this morning after being charged both criminally and civilly in an alleged $900 million Ponzi and fraud scheme in south Florida and elsewhere, the SEC said. Shapiro, 41, is a prominent Miami Beach businessman and philanthropist in the wholesale […]

A Florida man implicated in a pump-and-dump scheme tied to a Ponzi- and affinity-fraud scheme has been convicted and faces decades in federal prison. Michael J. Muzio, 46, of Tampa, was convicted on six counts of securities fraud, two counts of substantive wire fraud, two counts of lying to the SEC and the FBI and […]

A Texas jury has thrown the book at Edward S. Digges Jr., sentencing the Collin County man to 99 years in prison for fleecing 130 investors in a securities-fraud and Ponzi scheme. Digges, 63, formerly was an attorney in Annapolis, Md. He was disbarred in an overbilling scheme, convicted of mail fraud in 1990 and […]