Rivas Sentenced To 24 Years In Chattanooga-Based Swindle
The Chattanoogan.com
A man who swindled investors out of over $18 million from a base in Chattanooga was sentenced Thursday to serve the maximum 24 years and five months in federal prison.
Luis Rivas, 56, appeared before Federal Judge Curtis Collier. He was also ordered to make over $18 million in restitution.
Judge Collier said it was likely the largest fraud in the Eastern District of Tennessee and possibly in the entire state of Tennessee.
Agents said there were as many as 479 investors, including a hundred or more whose finance were “decimated” by the fraud.
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Federal Court Freezes Assets of Texas Trading Firms M25 Investments, Inc. and M37 Investments, LLC, and Scott Kear, Sr., Jeffrey Lyon and David Seaman, Charged by the CFTC with an $8 Million Forex Fraud
Court appoints a receiver to indentify assets and funds owed customers

Washington, DC — The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced it obtained an emergency court order freezing assets held by defendants M25 Investments, Inc., M37 Investments, LLC, Scott P. Kear, Sr., Jeffrey L. Lyon, all of Waxahachie, Tex., and David G. Seaman, of Arlington, Tex. The court’s order also prohibits the destruction of records and appoints a receiver to identify assets, customers and amounts owed customers.

The court’s order stems from a CFTC anti-fraud enforcement action filed on September 29, 2009, in the U.S. District Court in Dallas, charging the defendants with fraudulently soliciting at least $8 million from approximately 224 customers in connection with the trading of foreign currency (forex), forex options and commodity futures contracts. The defendants ran their alleged scheme out of their offices in Texas, West Virginia and Mississippi. Many of the defendants’ customers were elderly and knew each other through churches in West Virginia, Mississippi, Texas, Maryland and other states, according to the CFTC complaint.
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U.S. District Court Issues Orders Against Four “Operation Wooden Nickel” Defendants for their Roles in Defrauding Investors and Banks in Illegal Foreign Currency Schemes
Vito Napoletano and Boris Shuster, of New York, and Patrick Sweeney and Joseph Torre, of New Jersey, ordered to pay more than $7.6 million in restitution and penalties.
Washington, DC — The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced today that U.S. District Court Judge George Daniels of the Southern District of New York entered four separate orders against Vito Napoletano of Staten Island, N.Y., Boris Shuster of Brooklyn, N.Y., Patrick Sweeney of Freehold, N.J., and Joseph Torre of Old Bridge, N.J. The orders stem from the cooperative law enforcement investigation code-named “Operation Wooden Nickel,” an undercover law enforcement sting conducted by the CFTC, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Napoletano, Shuster, Sweeney, Torre and others were sued by the CFTC on November 18, 2003, in six civil injunctive actions for engaging in fraud in the sale and solicitation of illegal foreign currency (forex) futures contracts (see CFTC Press Release 4867-03, November 19, 2003). Including today’s announcement, Judge Daniels has entered several orders imposing more than $26 million in restitution and more than $19 million in civil monetary penalties against 36 Wooden Nickel defendants (see CFTC Press Releases 5265-06, 5315-07, 5490-08 and 5557-08).

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Manager of Bogus Foreign Currency Exchange Ponzi Scheme Pleads Guilty to Obstruction of Justice
Reuters
WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Teresa Vogt, a resident of Anaheim, Calif., pleaded guilty on Sept. 15, 2009, to one count of obstruction of justice before U.S. District Court Judge Dale S. Fischer in Los Angeles, the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced.
Vogt and eight co-defendants were indicted in May 2005 on tax fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and other charges related to the operation of the Genesis Fund. According to the indictment, Vogt and her co-defendants operated the fund, a bogus foreign currency exchange investment fund that operated as a Ponzi scheme from May 1998 to June 2002. The Genesis Fund received millions of dollars of investments.
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CFTC Charges North Carolina Foreign Currency Firm CapitalStreet Financial LLC and its Principal Sean F. Mescall with Operating a $1.3 Million Forex Ponzi Scam
Defendants allegedly misappropriated approximately $875,000 in customer funds for personal use and to further the scheme; federal court freezes defendants’ assets and protects books and records.

Washington, DC — The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today charged CapitalStreet Financial LLC (CSF) and Sean F. Mescall, both of Charlotte, N.C., with operating a Ponzi scheme involving the fraudulent solicitation of at least $1.3 million from at least 69 customers in connection with foreign currency (forex) trading. Defendants are also charged with misappropriating approximately $875,000 of customer funds.
On September 9, 2009, the same day the complaint was filed, the Honorable Robert J. Conrad, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, Charlotte Division, entered an order freezing the defendants’ and relief defendants’ assets, protecting books and records and scheduling a preliminary injunction hearing in the matter on September 16, 2009.
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Investment fraud suit grows more complex
The lawsuit, now unsealed, has a 146-page complaint amendment with 57 plaintiffs and three additional defendants.
By DAN BROWNING, Star Tribune
A federal lawsuit filed in July described a group of Twin Cities business entities that had been pitching a controversial foreign currency investment as “confusingly intertwined.” That appears to be an understatement.
A 146-page amendment to the complaint, unsealed Thursday at the request of the Star Tribune, makes the business entities look deeply enmeshed, with investment advisers from the firms allegedly working side-by-side at times to entice investors into a currency arbitrage program that promised double-digit returns without risk to capital.
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Previous stories:
Universal Brokerage FX Update - Where’s our money? new lawsuit asks Oxford firms
Forex - Investors try to get their money back

Federal Court Freezes the Assets of Florida Resident Beau Diamond and Diamond Ventures LLC, Charged by the CFTC with Operating a $37 Million Dollar Forex Fraud
Defendants charged with defrauding at least 200 investors in Ponzi scheme

Washington, DC – The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced that it obtained an emergency federal court order freezing the assets of defendants Beau Diamond and his company, Diamond Ventures LLC, both of Sarasota, Fla. The court’s order also prohibits the destruction of documents and grants the CFTC immediate access to defendants’ documents.

The order, entered on September 3, 2009, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, arises from a CFTC enforcement action filed that day charging Diamond and Diamond Ventures with operating a $37 million foreign currency (forex) Ponzi scheme that defrauded at least 200 investors.
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Related Stories:
Diamond Ventures LLC - Trading program raised red flags

Where’s our money? new lawsuit asks Oxford firms
The mystery of missing funds in a foreign currency investment grows deeper, as accusations fly in yet another courtroom action.
By DAN BROWNING, Star Tribune
First, some worried Ohio investors sued their Twin Cities money managers in an effort to get their cash out of an unusual foreign currency investment. Now, the money managers are pointing fingers.
Minneapolis investment adviser Bo Beckman filed a lawsuit in Hennepin County last week against former associate Trevor Cook, seeking an immediate accounting of the currency investments that Cook promoted through his Oxford Global Partners.
Cook and his Minneapolis company pitched a “paired currencies” arbitrage that promised double-digit returns without risk to capital. Beckman, who owns the Oxford Private Client Group, placed an undisclosed amount of his clients’ money into the strategy.
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Investors try to get their money back
Investors are struggling to withdraw from a Twin Cities currency exchange program embroiled in a lawsuit.

By DAN BROWNING, Star Tribune
Ken Locklin’s stomach dropped when he read about some Ohio residents who were having trouble getting their money out of a Twin Cities-based foreign currency investment. When he learned that talk radio host Pat Kiley may be involved in the dispute, Locklin jumped in his car for the 1,200-mile trip to the Twin Cities from his home in Fredericksburg, Texas.

Along the way, Locklin, 60, picked up 65-year-old Heiko Reske in Denton, Texas, and the pair set out to redeem the money that they and three friends and relatives had sunk into the “currency arbitrage” program at Universal Brokerage FX, which Kiley had pitched on his “Truth Seekers” radio program.
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Another one…

Francesc

Capital Blu investors’ $17M mostly gone, authorities say
By Orlando Sentinel

Investigators have found only a fraction of the $17million that investors poured into a Central Florida-based currency-trading scheme called Capital Blu, according to the company’s court-appointed receiver.
Less than $500,000 in cash has been recovered so far from Capital Blu Management LLC, whose operations began unraveling last year, said Lewis B. Freeman, the receiver and a veteran fraud examiner based in Miami.
Capital Blu’s money didn’t simply evaporate; authorities allege that the company’s principals spent at least some of it on striptease dancers, ritzy cars, island vacations, trips to Las Vegas and a private jet, among other things.
“We’ve seen testimony about money going to things like strip clubs and expensive cars, and we’re still looking into that,” Freeman said in an interview last week. “The question is, what money are we really able to recover? Getting money back from dancers and limousine companies is no simple chore.”
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