Ponzi Con Criminal - Stole From Seniors
Interesting story from the SEC about Gibbs who allegedly ran a Forex Ponzi scheme.
"The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced the filing of a settled civil injunctive action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia against Ralph Gregory Gibbs, a resident of New Haven, West Virginia, who operated an offering fraud and "Ponzi" scheme.The Complaint alleges that since at least April 2005 through February 2007, Gibbs, doing business as Golden Summit Group, raised approximately $21 million from at least 150 investors in at least 25 states through the offer and sale of securities.
Based on Gibbs' promises that they would receive large returns on their investments and guaranteed returns of their principal, a significant number of the investors, many of whom were elderly, retired or otherwise living on limited incomes, liquidated their retirement savings or obtained home equity loans to invest the money with Gibbs."
The reason I think that this is a interesting is because the SEC claims that
"The Commission's Complaint also alleges that of the approximately $21 million he raised from investors, Gibbs deposited only approximately $8.1 million into his Forex trading account, where he subsequently lost over $6.3 million of investor funds through his trading of currencies."
Who did he lose the money to? Were these real trades or only faked up loses? Trader kickbacks? Here is person faking up statements to this clients; perfectly reasonable to think that he was faking up the losses or at least getting a kickback on his trading volumes. Be worth knowing.
Read More From BizOp News
March 17, 2008
New York Ponzi Scheme
According to the FBI's press release about a new Ponzi scheme,
"MICHAEL J. GARCIA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today the indictment of HAYIM REGENSBERG on securities and wire fraud charges stemming from an alleged $11 million "Ponzi" scheme involving purported international initial public offering ("IPO") and othe investment products he marketed to investors from New York City and elsewhere.
REGENSBERG was previously arrested on November 14, 2007 on a federal criminal Complaint.
According to the Indictment and Complaint filed in Manhattan federal court:
REGENSBERG engaged in a scheme to defraud multiple investors by falsely promising to invest their money in one of two ways.
One method involved his claim that he had access to IPO issuances on foreign stock exchanges before the general public, and that he would invest money in international IPO stock that would be sold in the public market at the earliest possible moment thereafter, thereby obtaining for his investors quick returns of between approximately 5 percent and 15 percent within weeks of the IPO, with little or no risk to the invested capital.
REGENSBERG told investors that he had used the same international IPO investment strategy successfully in the past, and had a consistent and highly positive investment track record in such investments. In fact, REGENSBERG did not invest the investor funds as represented."
This is the standard "inside information" fraud. Yellow Kid, and other con artists, used to bilk marks pitching their inside information.
Only the marks who wanted something for nothing got caught up in the pitch.
