Kevin Merrill from Maryland was sentenced by a U.S. federal court to 22 years in prison for robing over 200 investors in a 396 million USD Ponzi scheme. Merrill, who has a 11 million USD vacation home in Naples, Florida, was indicted in September 2018 and ordered to forfeit $9 million USD, six real estate properties, 25 cars, a boat and other assets. Now he will have to pay restitution in the amount of 189.1 million USD to over 160 victims in monthly installments. Among his victims was a Louisiana couple in their 70s, who were defrauded of their 2 million USD retirement fund. US Attorney Robert Hur, labeling the 54-year-old Kevin Merrill after the sentencing “the next Bernie Madoff”, adding that “the money didn’t get to get spent on college tuition or retirement, the money went to luxury sports cars, and high-end watches, and expensive clothes and shoes, and extravagant mansions here in Maryland on the Eastern Shore and in Naples, Florida.”
It never ceases to amaze how the authorities discover a scam only after it exceeds a very large number. like 100M. Are they asleep for smaller frauds?
Pretty much. I was told by a federal agent that ponzi scam activity is "reported by victims daily, pretty much everywhere." That's why the FBI and other agencies concentrate on going after the biggest ponzi scammers primarily.
It's easy to wonder how investors can get sucked into these schemes. But I've had two instances in the past few years where I very carefully researched the opportunities presented. Each was promoted regularly in national publications. I spoke directly to references, ran background checks, reviewed their documents. One was a real estate investment trust, and the other (Allen Stanford), a CD offering. Each time, within weeks of completing my due diligence and before investing, the operators were busted after years of running scams. A wolf will seldom appear wearing a wolf's clothing. Buyer always beware.
Not all of the simple folks have such an ability , to do that kind of research. (just a laud thought) Ofcourse simple folks, don't have such opportunities presented to them and such amounts of wealth at their disposal, that often. So, if they had a chance to hire someone, to do the investigation for them, yet they choose not to do so, it's kinda their fault as well. Maybe it was greed, euphoria mindset, that clouded their judgement of realistic returns & safety first. Ironically, maybe it was greed as well, that clouded the judgement of consequences , from scammers perspective. Like, if for the things like that, there would be a death penalty (just a hypothesis), how big of a reduce in %, of cases like that happening, there would be. Maybe not that much, who knows. Maybe a social disposal of people that commit such crimes, have a high % of psychopaths/sociopaths among them. Especially high IQ psychopathic narcissist, like in the movie ,, American Psycho ''. Since they know it all, they are not scarred by consequences, because in their mind, it's impossible to catch them.
If the private sector was incentivized sufficiently they would be going after small ponzi schemes before they become large ponzi schemes.
You would think with every single resource available to you today and everything in the news that you would have to be a fool to fall for any ponzi scheme. I wonder what the average age is of the people falling for these schemes...always seems to be the elders.
Don't be so certain. Many of these schemes are very sophisticated, and hook intelligent, experienced investors. By any chance ever heard of WeWork ??
Sophisticated....believe me they are very easy to decipher, doesn't take much to break it down. We work...please....the fact that they were allowed to take out tens and tens and tens of billions in lease commitments is beyond my comprehension and then hearing that he mentioned the company was recession proof...haaa. no company is recession proof. Everyone feels the pinch is a hard downward economic cycle