The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged three more advisors in connection with their participation in a decades-long Ponzi scheme that raised more than $110 million from over 400 investors.
In a complaint filed on June 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia Atlanta Division, the SEC charged Michael Mooney, Britt Wright and Penny Flippen, three former investment advisor representatives of Southport Capital, with helping fuel the scheme concocted by the firm’s owner and manager, John J. Woods. (Southport’s corporate name is Livingston Group Asset Management Company.)
Woods, of Marietta, Ga., also controlled an investment fund called Horizon Private Equity III LLC. In August 2021, the SEC charged him and Southport with multiple counts of securities fraud for operating Horizon as a Ponzi scheme.
At that time, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order and froze his assets in response to an emergency action filed by the SEC, which had sought civil fraud charges against Woods and his entities. The judge granted a request for a receivership to be appointed to gather, preserve and protect any existing assets.
According to the complaint, between 2008 and 2021, the three Southport advisors, Mooney, Wright and Flippen, recommended that their…
