The Securities and Exchange Commission has obtained final judgments against eight of the defendants involved in a $345 million Ponzi scheme that defrauded 230 investors, the agency announced today. The judgment totals almost $190 million and involves two of the scheme’s three creators, all of whom have already been sentenced to jail time for the fraud, which prosecutors said allowed its creators to misappropriate millions to fund lavish lifestyles with cars and jewelry.
The investment scheme was pitched to investors as a way to purchase consumer debt portfolios. The three fraudsters and their businesses were originally named in the SEC complaint in 2018, and shortly thereafter, two of the defendants’ wives were also named as relief defendants when the agency said the women had received millions in proceeds from the fraud.
Two of the original defendants are the subject of today’s judgment, as well as six of the businesses and one of the wives (as a relief defendant).
The Ponzi scheme operated from at least 2013 until September 2018, at which point the SEC filed an emergency civil injunction against two of the operators and a handful of their businesses. The scheme involved, “among other things, securities offerings rife with misrepresentations, fake debt, forged signatures,…
