According to securities regulators in New Jersey, James Hankins, Jr. and his companies, Hankins Private Client Group, The Hankins Group Ltd. and Hankins Life Settlement, operated a Ponzi scheme. Hankins rasied $7 million by selling promissory notes to 101 people by promising returns between 10 percent and 15 percent. The New Jersey Attorney General, with help from [...]
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged Paul G. Bultmeyer, Arthur J. Piacentini, Sherbourne Capital Management, Ltd. and Sherbourne Financial, Ltd. with securities fraud in connection with an alleged scheme involving the sale of “Prime Certificates of Participation.”
Harvy Lipman, a staff writer for NorthJersey.com, wrote a fantastic article about an investment scheme that preyed on church members. David A. Talbot is best known for being Michael Vick’s financial advisor before being removed by a Virginia bankruptcy court for misappropriating Vick’s assets. But now, according to the state attorney general, Talbot is at [...]
Yesterday it was Orthodox Jews. Today its members of the Family Federation for World Peace (FFWP) – formerly known as the Unification Church. The SEC has charged Kay Services, LLC, and its sole owner and officer, Marcia Sladich, with orchestrating a Ponzi scheme that bilked at least 1,000 investor of more than $10 million.
Some financial frauds are so intricately planned and flawlessly executed that we could call them “impressive” if not for their criminal design and horrendous aftermath. Those scams often have more than ten cooperating participants, some of whom make the sale, others who pose as employees – or even officers – of a well-known financial company [...]
Glenn Frey had a hit in the 80’s called “Smuggler’s Blues.” The song includes the lyric “it’s the lure of easy money, it’s got a very strong appeal.” That line speaks as much to financial criminals as it does to drug smugglers.
Robert E. Kessler of Newsday reports:
Registered Broker-Dealer. Member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). Every brokerage firm you’ve ever done business with touts those three things. Let’s admit it–unless you work in the industry, those claims make the firm sound stable, solid, and safe. They give it an aura of legitimacy. A case the SEC [...]
Greg Saitz of the Newark Star-Ledger is reporting:
that the largest number of investor complaints to the SEC’s office of investor education and advocacy deal with “solicitations of investors by unregistered entities that appear to be involved in boiler room and secondary advance fee schemes.”
In an article run this morning, Saitz gives a list of New Jersey-based [...]
The Securities and Exchange Commission today filed charges against Detroit-area resident Edward May and his company E-M Management Co. LLC alleging that they ran a $250 million fraud for nine years between 1998 and July 2007. According to the SEC, May and E-M defrauded 1,200 investors, many of them senior citizens by falsely representing that they had contracts to provide telecommunications [...]
The Madoff Principle
Maxwell Smith of Fair Haven, New Jersey, operated a financial scam for more than 15 years. He operated the scam at the several brokerage firm he worked for over a 35 year career as a stockbroker. He promised guaranteed returns of between seven and a half and nine percent per year. He raised more than $10 [...]