ponzi

A Los Angeles man was sentenced this week to 240 months in federal prison for operating a Ponzi scheme that raised at least USD650 million with bogus claims that investor money would be used to acquire licensing rights to films that HBO and Netflix purportedly had agreed to distribute abroad.

How often do you read something and find out that it's not what you thought it was when you started?

For all those that leapt on "Melbourne" - it's almost certainly not the one you were thinking of.

Melbourne, Florida is where this story is developing.

The USA's Securities and Exchange Commission has obtained an asset freeze and other emergency relief in an emergency civil (i.e. not criminal court) enforcement action against Los Angeles-based actor Zachary Horwitz and his company, 1inMM (one in a million) Capital, LLC in connection with an alleged Ponzi scheme that raised over USD690 million. Horwitz and 1inMM allegedly told investors that they were buying film rights, purportedly to resell them to Netflix and HBO; in fact, 1inMM actually had no business relationship with either company.

Richard Rufus used to be a soccer player for a team called Charlton Athletic. The Insolvency Service brought a case before the High Court which said that Rufus created a GBP16 million Ponzi scheme. The Insolvency Service said it was one of the worst cases they had ever seen. Rufus claimed to be a born again Christian. Victims tried to avoid being identified at the time of the civil trial which saw Rufus subject to a 15 year bankruptcy order. But now, information has come to light that a 12,000 member church in the UK has lost the best part of GBP4 million.