Investor's Watchdog.com: Stock, finance and investment protection for investors

The SEC has shut down an unusual alleged scheme in Ohio.  According the SEC,  Michael Spillan, his wife Melissa Spillan, and their companies, One Equity Corporation, Triangle Equities Group, Inc., Victory Management Group, Inc. and Dafcan Finance, Inc.  held themselves out as lenders who would take publicly traded stock as security for the loans. 

According to the SEC, 125 investors borrowed money from the defendants and put their stock up as security planning to pay off the loan and reclaim the stock.  Instead of holding the stock for eventual return to investors who repaid their loans, though, the defendants sold the stock when they received it and used the proceeds to pay expenses, including more than $1 million for salaries and benefits for themselves.

This is not your typical scheme and should remind us that the form of financial scams is limited only by the imagination of the scam artist.  Before putting your nest egg at risk, even as security for a loan, ask a former SEC Enforcement Branch Chief what he thinks about it.