What is known is that about 11,900 claimants have come forward. The number is included in a Dec. 4 report filed by Krista L. Freitag, the court-appointed receiver. The deadline for filing originally was Nov. 9. But Freitag, in October, asked the court to extend the deadline in part because too few claimants had surfaced.
U.S. District Judge John F. Walter of the Central District of California extended the deadline until Dec. 24 and empowered the receiver to take other actions “to increase the number of investor claims submitted,” according to the court docket.
The order seems to have aided the cause.
Noted Freitag in her report: “As proposed in the Receiver’s application, in addition to a reminder email blast notifying investors of the extended bar date and steps approved by the Court, the steps taken by the Receiver include opening a live telephone line for investor calls (which can be answered in six different languages), allowing investors to submit their supporting documents by mail, mailing physical notices to investors whose addresses are available from checks, and holding an in-person meeting in Los Angeles at which investors were able to submitting claims with assistance from the Receiver and her staff. As a result of these efforts, the response rate and number of claims received have increased significantly.”
As of Nov, 27, the number of claimants stood at approximately 11,900, the receiver noted.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The story about Phil Ming Xu’s asserted cooperation with the government appears below the subhead. We’ll lead with the news of extension of the claims deadline for WCM777 victims.
If you’re a victim of the World Capital Market/WCM777 Ponzi- and pyramid scam shut down by the SEC last year, you now have until Dec. 24 — Christmas Eve — to file your claim.
The original claims deadline had been Nov. 9. On Oct. 26, court-appointed receiver Krista L. Freitag asked for an extension. U.S. District Judge John F. Walter of the Central District of California granted the request on the same day, extending the deadline until Dec. 24 and empowering the receiver to take other actions “to increase the number of investor claims submitted,” according to the court docket.
Among other things, the WCM777 case demonstrates the logistical challenges posed by cross-border fraud schemes operating over the Internet and involving cash transactions and potentially thousands of domestic and international bank accounts, including at least 100 linked to accused WCM777 Ponzi schemer Phil Ming Xu alone. Victims from multiple countries piled up potentially by the tens of thousands. Not all of them spoke the same language and, as in similar scams, not all of them paid WCM777 directly. Rather, they paid their “upline” sponsor, making the task of following the money and filing a claim more difficult. (See March 15, 2015, PP Blog story: “WCM777: More Theft And Money Laundering MLM-Style.”
Phil Ming Xu Says He Cooperated With Government
The opening of a Phil Ming Xu declaration originally filed under seal in April 2014. The seal was lifted at the request of an investor and after federal prosecutors did not object.
Messina is alleged to have come into possession of $5 million in proceeds from the WCM777 fraud, some of which allegedly was directed to International Market Ventures, a company operated by Gary Messina, his nephew. Gary Messina formerly worked as the chief information officer for the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, an arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Messina has been ordered to return the $5 million, and IMV — the recipient of a transfer from Messina — is on the hook for $941,505 of it.
The effort to lift the seal on Ming Xu’s April 2014 filings began more than a year later, on Aug. 21, 2015, with a filing by an alleged victim of Xu from Daly City, Calif. This individual asserted he’d wired $2,000 to HSBC Bank in Hong Kong as his initial investment in WCM, a company that “represented itself as a leader in China based business and finance.”
Walter lifted the seal in an order dated Sept. 14, after the office of U.S. Attorney Eileen M. Decker of the Central District of California did not object. Precisely what Decker’s office is investigating remains unclear, although tens of millions of dollars are alleged to have flowed through WCM and related entities.
How dangerous is the world of HYIP Ponzis? Well, the Press Democrat of Santa Rosa, Calif., reported in January 2015 that investigators believe a murder might be tied to WCM777 and a companion scam known as Kingdom777.
Ming Xu also was concerned about being harmed, according to his now-unsealed motion from April 2014 to file under seal. He did not list a source of harm, but with so much money and so many tentacles involved, it could be anybody — from a person down the street to a person overseas.
From the motion (italics added):
“Xu is making this request because public disclosure of his cooperation with the government, including the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California and the Securities and Exchange Commission, could jeopardize potential criminal investigations and the use of proactive covert operations. If Xu’s cooperation was disclosed, potential subjects of the ongoing investigations may take certain steps to hide evidence and proceeds of criminal activity, flee the jurisdiction or potentially harm Xu or his family.”
As for what Ming Xu said in his actual declaration docketed in May 2014 and now public . . .
If you were pushing WCM777 during hotel pitchfests and in your church and continue to have doubt WCM777 was a Ponzi scheme, put those doubts to rest. The huckster conceded the Ponzi in his declaration, while alleging Messina also knew it was a Ponzi.
From the declaration (italics added):
“Mr. Messina knew the $5 million transferred to him was proceeds of an illegal Ponzi scheme and is being investigated by SEC and knew I was sending him the money to avoid detection and seizure of the funds by the federal government. I transferred the $5 million to Mr. Messina’s IOLTA account because he warned me the government would seize the money as illegal proceeds of the Ponzi scheme. Mr. Messina told me on several occasions that WCM had serious criminal and civil liability issues, and that he expected federal agents to show up at our office in Pasadena, execute a search warrant, seize all the computers, and other business records of WCM’s business operations.”
Ming Xu continued (italics added):
On or about February 27, 2014, Mr. Messina sent me a document to sign stating that the transfer of the $5 million was a non-recourse loan payable in full in five years. I executed the loan document after being advised to do so by Mr. Messina. The money I transferred to Mr. Messina was not truly a loan and the two-line document purporting to be a loan agreement is false.
On or about March 20, 2014, I wrote and sent a letter to Mr. Messina, wherein I demanded return of the $5 million transferred from the ToPacific bank account into Mr. Messina’s IOLTA account for SEC settlement. Mr. Messina refused to return the monies.
I have subsequently learned that Mr. Messina has disbursed some of these funds to an entity, International Marketing Ventures, a company that is controlled and operated by Gary Messina, his nephew.
I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of California that the foregoing is true and correct.
It is unclear if Ming Xu currently is cooperating with the government and how much his asserted cooperation in April 2014 helped in pursuit of the WCM777 case or other cases.
What is clear is that the WCM777 story has included a series of bizarre developments — everything from a pledge of love for the people of Peru written on the letterhead of a suspended California company and a recitation of the importance of “blood moons” to the appearance of a “Jesus sword” and the apparent involvement of a former CIA operative.
Strangest of all, though, may be the Ming Xu claim he was taking over a company linked to the film “Innocence of Muslims” as part of a bid to “transform nations” and “train a group of Josephs to bless the world.”
Who constituted the “Josephs” and how they would “bless the world” always has been unclear, as has the nature of the purported “training” they required. This particular segment of the WCM777 narrative is deeply strange in other ways. For example, a former reputed member of the Mafia named “Dr. Bruno Caporrimo” is part of the narrative and a purported Ming Xu associate.
So is a purported California university known as the “Joseph Global Institute” of which Ming Xu purportedly was “dean” and Caporrimo reportedly was “chancellor.” As the PP Blog reported last year, one promo for the institute appeared to rip off video footage from Liberty University, a well-known Christian college in Virginia.
‘Joseph Global Institute’ Narrative Evolves
Something that curiously calls itself “Southwestern University” even though it uses the four-letter acronym SWIU (at www.swiu.edu) now claims online that it has absorbed the Joseph Global Institute. Best we can tell, SWIU stands for “Spirituality Wisdom Inspiration Understanding” and appears not to be affiliated with Southwestern University of Georgetown, Texas, which uses www.southwestern.edu. SWIU purports to have a campus at 4040 Saltburn Drive in Georgetown, but the city does not have such a street, the Georgetown Police Department told the PP Blog today. (The city of Plano, nearly three hours from Georgetown, has a Saltburn Drive.)
The Joseph Global Institute previously planted the seed it was affiliated with Harvard.
Some people have blamed the “Innocence of Muslims” film for the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on U.S. outposts in Bengazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The issue has dogged former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now a Democratic candidate for President of the United States.
The WCM777 Ponzi-scheme story has proceeded through all sorts of tortured twists and turns, creating nonfiction that reads like fiction. Although it not unusual for bizarre narratives to accompany Ponzi schemes, the narratives surrounding WCM777 are particulary bizarre — and Americans should be concerned and follow developments closely.
WCM777 claims will be accepted in the not-too-distant future, under a proposal by Krista L. Freitag, the court-appointed receiver in the SEC’s pyramid- and Ponzi-scheme case.
The proposal, which includes time guidelines but no specific date upon which claims will be accepted, was submitted to U.S. District Judge John F. Walter of the Central District of California on June 3. Walter must approve the plan. The dates will become clear once the plan, which is subject to objections and amendments, is approved.
EDITORIAL NOTE: IMPORTANT:There is no way to file claims right now, but it perhaps is best to assemble your documentation now — before the filing date and deadlines are announced. As is typical in HYIP scams, WCM777’s books and records allegedly were a mess. In formulating the plan, Freitag says she also has taken the cross-border nature of the scheme into account, but budgeting also is a concern.
Says the receiver, “The notice, the physical claim form, the claim form website and call center will be presented in six languages – English, Spanish, Mandarin, Portuguese, Taiwanese and Japanese. While this does not cover all languages for known investors (because the cost of translation is significant), these six languages account for nearly 90% of investors who received and opened my October 2014 e-blast notification.”
Up to 96,000 claimants could come forward, according to an estimate by Freitag. She has nominated Epiq Systems — Class Action & Mass Tort Solutions. Inc., to be the claims administrator.
Snippet From The Proposal
We highly recommend you read the receiver’s plan to gain an understanding of the specifics before the claims process begins. The information below is from the plan and speaks to the difficulties scams such as WCM777 present (italics/bolding added):
3. In formulating procedures for the administration of claims, my goal is to find an efficient and cost effective means to verify and validate investor and creditor claims. In a best case scenario, a receiver transmits the receivership entity’s estimated claim amounts to claimants as part of the proof of claim form and simply seeks confirmation of the claim information. In other cases, a receiver requests claim information and matches the information received from claimants with information found in the records of the receivership entities or backup information provided by investors. Here, these approaches are simply not feasible because there are not reliable, detailed records reflecting who invested and how much was invested.
4. Three additional factors impact the claims review process in this case. First, a significant number of investors did not invest directly with the Receivership Entities, but rather invested through other individuals and entities. That is, many investors gave their money to another individual who pooled the money from multiple investors for a lump sum deposit with the Receivership Entities. This makes the process of matching claims to deposits far more complicated as the Receivership Entities’ records do not accurately reflect each individual investor’s payment.
5. Second, there are many thousands of investors from many countries around the world and the records indicate that the majority of these investors speak at a minimum six different languages. This makes the cost of all phases of the claims process, including manually reviewing claims, extremely expensive.
6. Third, there is the issue of “points.” As the Court will recall from the Commission’s filings, WCM, the third parties involved in pooling, and some insiders issued or sold points to investors. These points were not formally ascribed any particular value. However, the records show that an extensive marketplace for points developed that was independent of the WCM enterprise. While there was no value ascribed to such points by the Receivership Entities, investors and others purchased, sold, traded and valued the points as if they could be exchanged for cash or goods. As such, the expectation is that many investors will provide claim information based on misconceptions related to the value of their points as well as their cash investment in the Receivership Entities. This issue may also dramatically impact the estimated number of ‘known’ investors as those who traded or otherwise sold points may nothave ‘registered’ themselves in the company databases.
UPDATED 9:44 P.M. EDT MARCH 14 U.S.A. How strange were things in the universe of WCM777, an MLM “program” accused by the SEC last year of pulling off an $80 million, cross-border Ponzi swindle?
Would you believe that a former CIA operative with two felony convictions ended up on the payroll?
Robert Sensi, the former operative, received $403,000 from companies linked to WCM777, according to an amended lawsuit filed against Sensi in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
WCM777 was operated by Ming Xu of Temple City, Calif. A forensic accounting has determined that the WCM777 entities used 77 domestic bank accounts and 23 foreign ones, according to filings by court-appointed receiver Krista L. Freitag.
Sensi was paid six times through ToPacific Inc. and one time through World Capital Market Inc. between Jan 30 and March 25, 2014, according to court filings.
Alleged payments to Robert Sensi from WCM777-related firms. Source: Screen shot from federal court filing.
Freitag is suing Sensi for return of the money. She initially sued him for the return of $385,000 (excluding interest and costs) in November 2014, alleging that he claimed he “used to work” for the CIA and was hired by WCM777-related companies to address complaints about the program by authorities in Peru, Taiwan and Dubai. She further alleged that Sensi was “well aware” that various WCM777-related business were engaged in a Ponzi scheme.
Sensi responded to the November complaint on Feb. 9. He did not expressly deny Freitag’s claim that he had claimed to have worked for the CIA, but he did deny the allegations he’d been hired by the Xu entities to address the concerns about WCM777 in Peru, Taiwan and Dubai. He further denied he had knowledge of a Ponzi scheme.
In his answer, Sensi admitted “services were rendered pertaining to Peru, Taiwan, and Dubai.” But he did not describe the services. On March 12, Freitag filed an amended complaint, asserting in the filing that Sensi had received $403,000 from the WCM777 entities, not the $385,000 specified in the original complaint.
Court records or published reports from the past two decades show that Sensi has been sentenced to prison twice — once for stealing millions of dollars from Kuwait Airways, a second time for a “Nigerian letters” scam in which a German businessman was swindled.
Larry J. Kolb, an author and former CIA agent, has written extensively about Sensi, his ties to the CIA and further ties to Republican politicians and Republican political causes, including fundraising.
Chapter 1 of “America at Night,” a 2007 book by Kolb, is available for free on Kolb’s website. The chapter references a meeting Kolb had in California with attorney “Vince Messina” in May 2004.
A snippet (italics added):
Vince was late for lunch, and I wish he’d never shown up. But, then again, all indications are if Vince hadn’t sucked me back into the secret world, somebody else would’ve. So I don’t hold it against him. Vince Messina. Washington tax and immigration attorney, international dealmaker, bon vivant. Based on what I know of his background, he has to be as old as the hills. But somehow he doesn’t seem it. Bald on top, short dark hair on the sides, olive skin, smiles a lot, constantly on the move. Vince is on the up and up, but spends much of his time in strange lands working for mysterious clients.
During the lunch meeting, Messina asked Kolb if he knew Sensi, a somewhat startling question, Kolb wrote.
After Kolb answered yes, Messina called his nephew, Gary Messina, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security official, to enable Gary to listen in, Kolb wrote.
Ten years later, in May 2014, Vincent Messina would become a relief defendant in the WCM777 Ponzi case. The SEC alleged that Messina was WCM’s asserted “general counsel” and had come into possession of $5 million from the fraud scheme.
More than $941,000 of the $5 million went to International Market Ventures (IMV), a company operated by Gary Messina, according to court filings.
U.S. District Judge John F. Walter declared the $5 million that flowed to Vincent Messina “ill gotten” and ordered it disgorged. IMV was held jointly liable with Vincent Messina for disgorgement of $941,505 of the $5 million sum.
“Many investors gave cash to the company and to their leaders (or upline sponsors) who then deposited the cash along with other investor funds.” — Krista L. Freitag, court-appointed receiver in the WCM777 pyramid- and Ponzi case, Feb. 27, 2015
EDITOR’S NOTE: Tens of millions of dollars allegedly flowed through WCM777 and related entities. At the bottom of this column, you’re going to read that an apparent apologist for accused Ponzi schemer Ming Xu is claiming the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is violating his human rights. Fair warning: You might want to have your vomit bucket at the ready . . .
UPDATED 10:31 A.M. ET U.S.A. Here’s how you rob the Christians in an offering fraud that involves the sale of tens of millions of dollars in unregistered securities across state and national borders: You start an MLM “program,” get it in the churches and on YouTube, permit “leaders” to gather money from their enraptured audiences and put out the word that $1,999 returns $3,200 in 100 days.
It might help if you have a storefront in, say, Peru. It also might help if you have, say, promoters willing to tout the “program” in webinars and from a “function room in a hotel in Massachusetts.” At the same time, it might help if you have promoters willing to steal the intellectual property of the “Rocky” movie franchise to drive dollars into any of the “77 domestic and 23 foreign bank accounts” you’re using. (The bank-account information is sourced from a forensic accounting by Krista L. Freitag, the court-appointed receiver in the WCM777 case. It was filed Feb. 27 in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and is the basis for part of this PP Blog column. Links to exhibits are provided near the bottom of the column.)
Along the way, it might help if you follow the standard blueprint from one MLM scam after another that calls for you to disarm skeptics by dropping the names of plenty of famous businesses, perhaps with the aim of hoping your “leaders” will follow your lead and do the same thing. Damn! Wouldn’t you know it! They did exactly that! (See link in first paragraph of this story.)
It might be particularly helpful if you make a calculation that a bank such as HSBC in Hong Kong might frown upon a subpoena issued in the United States and clam up when it comes to assisting the receiver appointed to your case after the SEC moves in.
“To date, HSBC-Hong Kong has not responded to the Receiver’s requests/subpoena,” Freitag advised U.S. District Judge John F. Walter in her forensic accounting.
Or maybe HSBC doesn’t want to open a new can of worms after it settled with the Justice Department in December 2012 by forfeiting $1.256 billion and entering into a deferred-prosecution agreement after it was accused of “willfully failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering (AML) program, willfully failing to conduct due diligence on its foreign correspondent affiliates, violating [the International Emergency Economic Powers Act] and violating [the Trading with the Enemy Act].”
“Vincent,” the alleged Ming Xu email to Messina began. “We have lots of members for our social capital company, WCM777 in Brazil. They paid us in Brazil. How to move the money legally from Brazil to USA or Hong Kong?”
Whether Messina provided guidance on how to get money out of Brazil and move it to the United States and Hong Kong is unclear. Ming Xu’s email, however, suggests that WCM affiliates in Brazil, like their U.S. counterparts, also were collecting money directly from MLM recruits and that Ming Xu needed to find a way to get the cash under his control.
Freitag says she has traced $5 million in Ming Xu proceeds to Messina, and Walter ordered Messina to return it. Only $2.133 million has been returned, Freitag says.
Messina wasn’t just a lawyer; he was a WCM777 “insider,” the receiver alleges.
Because Freitag has access to certain WCM777 banking records, she has been able to determine that “$29,404,996” went to HSBC in Hong Kong “for 7 Receivership Entities and 1 individual.”
Ming Xu used numerous companies as part of his overall money-moving scheme, the receiver contends.
Here’s how she describes one transaction that occurred after WCM777 got in trouble with the Massachusetts Securities Division in late 2013 and agreed to return money to the fleeced investors in that state (italics added):
“ . . . rescission payments were made to WCM777 investors in accordance with the Consent Order issued by the Massachusetts Securities Division. Bank records show that funds from ToPacific bank accounts were used to make payments to the Massachusetts WCM777 investors.”
“ToPacific” was a company in the WCM777 fold.
How circuitous were things within WCM777 (italics added):
“the payment methods with which investors payments were made varied from third-party electronic disbursement (primarily Global Payout) to physical checks written directly on Receivership Entity bank accounts. There does not appear to be any consistency in the bank accounts from which investor checkswere written. Rather, bank records indicate payments were made to investors from whichever accounts happen[ed] to have funds available at the time the payments were made.”
The FBI has been warning about shell companies involved in crime and how banks and payment processors can get caught up in it since at least 2010. Even so, the WCM777 entities somehow managed to open at least 100 bank accounts while also gaining access to bank wires and at least one payment processor.
Here’s how Freitag describes the overall scheme (italics added/light editing performed):
“The Receivership Entities’ primary source of income was investor deposits, which was also the primary source of virtually all funds distributed to the investors; [t]he vast majority of the Receivership Entities’ business activities revolved around raising and distributing investor funds; [i]nvestor funds were so materially commingled between and among the Receivership Entities that the entities operated as a unitary enterprise, rather than as separate entities.”
And while WCM777 recruits thought they were joining an MLM “program,” their money financed the purchases of two golf courses in California, several pieces of real estate, including one with live koi, and a series of purported investments elsewhere. These allegedly included jewelry or gold, oil and gas — and even piles of “jeans, shorts, pants and leggings” stored by Ming Xu’s sister.
Ming Xu’s Mom allegedly got a new house, but not until after the cash to purchase the home had passed through bank accounts linked to Ming Xu and his sister.
The Ming Xu Twitter account, which once claimed all would become known when “blood moons” appeared in the sky and published a picture of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, whom Ming Xu had corralled at a networking event in California, now includes a link to a website that claims (italics added):
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was wrong to close down the company and confiscate about $43M cash asset and oil reserve asset of $50M. It has violated the company’s legal interests and human rights of Ming Xu.
Read the exhibits from Freitag’s forensic accounting. (Here’s one; here’s the other.)
As noted above, you might want to have a vomit bucket handy if you’re contemplating how certain MLM “programs” are operating these days in the era of epic white-collar fraud and while terrorism, beheadings and attacks on police are occurring.
After Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was exposed in December 2008, Beverly Hills hedge-fund manager Bradley L. Ruderman wrote a letter to clients assuring them them their money was safe and deploring Madoff’s “chicanery,” federal prosecutors in the Central District of California said.
“[S]uch disgraceful practices will never happen under my watch,†Ruderman declared in the letter.
Less than five months later — on April 28, 2009 — the SEC charged Ruderman, 46, with defrauding investors and lying about his Ruderman Capital Partners and Ruderman Capital Partners “A” hedge funds.
Ruderman had falsely told investors that Lowell Milken, chairman of the Milken Family Foundation and Michael Milken’s younger brother, and Larry Ellison, chief executive officer of Oracle Corp., invested with him, the SEC said.
And “Ruderman falsely told investors that the hedge funds had earned positive returns from 15% to 60% per year and had over $800 million in assets,†the SEC said. “In reality, the hedge funds lost money and had less than $650,000 in assets.”
Criminal charges followed in May 2009. In August 2009, Ruderman pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud, two counts of investment adviser fraud and one count of not filing a tax return for 2007, a year in which he earned $2 million.
He was sentenced yesterday, and U.S. District Judge John F. Walter admonished Ruderman.
“He stole from individuals he knew for many years, who cared about him, had invited him into their homes and shared meals with him, who had known him since he was a child,” Walter said.
Ruderman family members and friends lost $25 million in the scheme, prosecutors said.
When Ruderman wrote the letter assuring investors he was no Madoff and that their accounts were safe, the judge said, “he was stealing their money.â€
After hearing a statement from a victim that Ruderman was no different than a convenience-store thief or bank robber except he had “committed his crimes with manicured nails, a great tan, wearing an Armani suit and the getaway car was a Porsche that his victims all paid for,†Walter sentenced Ruderman to 121 months in federal prison.
Given the recent “staggering increase†in investor-advisor frauds, Walter said, he wanted to “send a message that these crimes will result in significant prison sentences.â€
FBI agents who reverse-engineered the crime determined Ruderman had lost “$5.2 million of investor money in clandestine poker games held on a regular basis in a suite at a luxury Beverly Hills hotel.”
Meanwhile, the investigation revealed that Ruderman, like Madoff, had sent investors bogus account statements. At the same time, it revealed he had spent had spent at least “$8.7 million of investor money on personal expenses, including $200,000 each summer for a rented beach house in Malibu, two Porsches, $53,930 on sporting events, $896,000 in credit card charges and $327,000 in cash expenditures.”
Walter ordered Ruderman to pay nearly $26 million in restitution to victims. The FBI and IRS conducted the criminal probe.
In the bizarre WCM777 Ponzi- and pyramid scheme, investors may not know what has become of Ming Xu and how much the equally bizarre Joseph Global Institute reportedly once operated by Xu and a former Mafia member continues to contribute to the vomitous madness.
