SEC Uncovers Another Ponzi Scheme

Dow Jones is reporting that the Securities and Exchange Commission has charged six people living in Florida with executing a $300 million international Ponzi scheme. The agency said that the scheme sucked in more than 3,000 investors in both the United States and Canada. The SEC said that the defendants presented themselves as an “independent financial education firm that had discovered profitable investment opportunities with companies involved in gold mining.” They supposedly held conferences and seminars where they “promised investors they could earn 18-36% annual returns” by investing in companies they posited were fully collateralized by gold. Instead, the money was sent out to shell companies owned by two other perpetrators, who were living in Calgary. The SEC alleges that the perpetrators used investor funds to purchase a home, pay off a daughter’s mortgage, as well as other personal obligations.