Stop us if you’ve heard this one before
Posted on August 31, 2009 at 10:29 pmIn the name of the Savior, dude rakes in “investment” funding from the faithful. In solemn stewardship, another guy acts as a “brother in God” to “take care” of his clients’ financial needs. With a certain former employee of a local brokerage firm, here we go again:
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced today that … it has permanently barred two brokers for running multi-million-dollar Ponzi schemes that victimized a wide range of investors — including elderly individuals, mentally and physically impaired individuals, church members and even family friends….
FINRA also barred William Walter Spencer, Sr., of Franklin, TN, who “borrowed” nearly $2 million from elderly members of his church and from customers of his employing broker-dealer, Wiley Bros. - Aintree Capital, LLC….
[F]rom December 1997 to May 2008, Spencer induced investors to invest in promissory notes falsely promising rates of return 10 to 12 percent higher than rates available on traditional investments. In all, there were 234 such transactions and 80 percent of the investors were elderly members of his church community who had previously invested their funds in certificates of deposit or savings accounts. FINRA found that Spencer knew at the time that he procured the loans that he did not have the liquid assets or ongoing income necessary to pay the interest and return the principal to the investors. Spencer failed to repay many of the individuals as promised and used the proceeds of new loans to satisfy existing loans.
All of the individuals from whom Spencer borrowed funds were of modest means. For example, one customer was a 62-year-old school bus driver for special needs children who loaned Spencer $60,000 after her husband’s death. Spencer used the loan to repay other customers.
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Off to pokey for 150 yrs.
Posted on July 14, 2009 at 1:54 pmBernie Madoff has arrived in North Carolina, but not to enjoy the bucolic, mountain scenery. Instead the disgraced investment advisor has been transferred to the federal prison in Butner, which will be his home for quite some time.
Con man Bernard Madoff arrived at the federal prison in Butner, North Carolina, to begin serving his 150-year sentence for fraud and money laundering, a Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesman said.
The agency yesterday transferred Madoff, 71, from a high- security lockup in Manhattan, where he’s been since his March 12 guilty plea, to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. Madoff left that facility this morning and arrived at Butner shortly after 11:15 a.m., bureau spokesman Greg Norton said.
Madoff will be assigned today to one of five housing units, where he will live in “dormitory style housing,” Norton said. If healthy enough, he’ll be given a job. Norton declined to say whether Madoff may eventually be transferred to another prison. “This is where he’s been designated to be,” Norton said.
Madoff gets the max
Posted on June 29, 2009 at 11:17 amConvicted Ponzi scheme operator Bernie Madoff was sentenced today in New York to the maximum 150 years in prison for operating his $50+ billion fraud according to various news outlets.
Although reports have said that Madoff’s attorneys were recommending a 12-year sentence, the judge was clearly more swayed by nine victims who told the court of how their lives had been affected by the the scam. One woman from Stamford, Conn. has been forced to rely on food stamps and gathering bottles to recycle.
Stealing from a symbol of freedom
Posted on April 3, 2009 at 8:29 amFrom the AP:
A nonprofit organization that’s helped repopulate Tennessee’s bald eagle population may have lost $500,000 through a Gatlinburg stock trader accused of running a Ponzi scheme.
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Nashville native sued over Madoff role
Posted on April 1, 2009 at 12:20 pmMassachusetts’ securities regulator is taking on Walter Noel and his Fairfield Greenwich asset management business. Noel, a graduate of MBA and Vanderbilt, led an investment team that, over the course of two decades, placed more than $7 billion of client money with Bernie Madoff.
Fairfield kept a database of standard responses for investors who questioned how safe the Madoff funds were, according to the complaint. In one response, Fairfield told concerned investors that Citco, the main clearinghouse for hedge fund transactions, had not been charged with verifying Madoff’s assets, but reassured them that there was adequate due diligence on the Madoff funds…
SEE ALSO: Noel’s assets are now on ice.
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Tennessee regulators part of property Ponzi scheme investigation
Posted on March 18, 2009 at 8:57 amOur state’s financial regulators have joined a dozen of their peers in calling for a court-appointed examiner to file through the records of a bankrupt Idaho-based investment firm that stands accused of abusing its power of attorney to the tune of $2 billion.
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Madoff charged with 11 counts of fraud, expected to plead guilty
Posted on March 10, 2009 at 5:06 pmFrom MarketWatch:
Bernard Madoff confirmed on Tuesday he is set to plead guilty to running a massive Wall Street fraud and prosecutors announced they want him sentenced to 150 years prison.
After months of speculation, Madoff confirmed in court through his lawyer Ira Sorkin that he will plead guilty at a hearing on Thursday. “I think that is a fair expectation,” Sorkin said.
Asked if Madoff, 70, would plead guilty to all 11 counts of fraud, Sorkin told the judge: “Yes your honor.” Prosecutors unveiled the charges at the hearing and said that they carried a maximum prison sentence of 150 years. “There is no plea agreement” for a reduced sentence for Madoff, the prosecutor told the judge.
SEE ALSO:
Sentencing guidelines
Explanation of charges
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VF puts homeboy Noel back in his place
Posted on March 5, 2009 at 1:07 pmWalter Noel, the Nashville native whose high-flying investment firm appears to be the biggest loser in the Bernard Madoff megafraud, gets the full kitty-can-scratch treatment, along with his family, in the latest issue of Vanity Fair. A representative graf:
Several people have observed that, after the Noels got really rich, they began to be perceived as irritating people who were not so welcome in the places where they bought new houses—in Southampton, Palm Beach, and Mustique: the world’s richest and snootiest communities, widely known to be minefields for the socially ambitious.
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SEC files amended complaint against Stanford
Posted on February 27, 2009 at 7:00 pmFrom the Commercial Appeal:
Today, the Securities and Exchange Commission released an amended complaint against Stanford and its top executives, R. Allen Stanford, James M. Davis and Laura Pendergest-Holt.
The complaint alleges that “for at least a decade,” Davis and Allen Stanford, through the companies they control under the Stanford umbrella, “executed a massive Ponzi scheme.”
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McLean instruments staying at Hall of Fame
Posted on December 30, 2008 at 8:25 pmThe museum will pay $750,000 to the creditors of Bob McLean, the Murfreesboro investor who killed himself after his Ponzi scheme unraveled. McLean had donated four rare instruments worth more than $1.5 million to the Hall of Fame, but the trustee overseeing his bankruptcy case in August asked for them to be returned.
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Nice and steady is the name of the game… or so it seems
Posted on December 17, 2008 at 12:47 amFormer tech stock analyst Henry Blodget’s financial observer blog Clusterstock offers the sharpest, and broadest coverage the Bernard Madoff scandal we’ve seen yet.
For example, an interesting analysis Madoff’s psychology via, of all things, his golfing scores. Echoing his ‘eerily consistent’ investment returns, the scorecards filed by Madoff on the links apparently show the same remarkably steady and modest scores…
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A slight positive in Madoff drama?
Posted on December 16, 2008 at 10:00 pmHaving talked to the SIPC’s top attorney, that’s what StreetInsider.com says might materialize.
Imagine $50 billion in net buying to the stock market, on behalf of the SIPC, to replace client’s stocks that were never bought? While this likely won’t happen to this extent, it is in the realm of possibility.
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