Court Orders $1 Billion Judgment Against Operators of Woodbridge Ponzi Scheme Targeting Retail Inves

[nitpicker]

https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2019-3

Court Orders $1 Billion Judgment Against Operators of Woodbridge Ponzi Scheme Targeting Retail Investors

Former Owner Robert H. Shapiro Fined $100 Million

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
2019-3
Washington D.C., Jan. 28, 2019 —

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that a federal court in Florida ordered Woodbridge Group of Companies LLC and its former owner to pay $1 billion in penalties and disgorgement for operating a Ponzi scheme that targeted retail investors. The Honorable Judge Marcia G. Cooke of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida approved judgments against Woodbridge and its 281 related companies ordering them to pay $892 million in disgorgement. The court ordered former owner and CEO Robert H. Shapiro to pay a $100 million civil penalty and to disgorge $18.5 million in ill-gotten gains plus $2.1 million in prejudgment interest.

In December 2017, the SEC filed an emergency action charging the company and other defendants with operating a massive $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme that defrauded 8,400 retail investors nationwide, many of them seniors who had invested retirement funds. The SEC's complaint alleged that Shapiro made Ponzi payments to investors and used a web of shell companies to conceal the scheme.
(snip)

The court's disgorgement order against Woodbridge and related corporate defendants will be deemed satisfied by a Liquidation Trust being formed under a plan in the Woodbridge Chapter 11 case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware (Case No. 17-12560-KJC). The Liquidation Trust will be obligated to make distributions of net proceeds from the disposition of the defendants’ assets in bankruptcy. The amount to be distributed will depend upon the amounts collected by the Liquidation Trust.
(snip)

[TexasTowelie]

1. The CEO is going on trial next month.

Once among the ‘1 percent,’ executive faces $1 billion Medicare fraud trial

Not long ago, Miami Beach executive Philip Esformes was living quite comfortably among America’s “1 percent,” raking in millions from his healthcare business, gobbling up pricey real estate and darting around the country in chartered jets.

Then, in a flash, his luxurious lifestyle went poof: FBI agents arrested Esformes in July 2016 and he suddenly became the poster boy for the biggest Medicare fraud case in the country. He was charged with bilking $1 billion out of the federal healthcare program for the elderly and disabled, while his vast business assets and bank accounts were frozen. Worse, Esformes, 50, was ordered held without bail at the Federal Detention Center in Miami.

Esformes was back in court Monday for one final hearing before he goes to trial by himself on Feb. 11. Once always tan and fit, he looked wan and frail as his defense team tried in vain to delay the start of trial. They sought more time to review the Justice Department’s long list of patients who prosecutors say received no services or medically unnecessary treatment at Esformes’ Miami-Dade chain of skilled-nursing and assisted-living facilities.

“We’re not ready to do it by Feb. 11,” said Esformes’ defense attorney, Howard Srebnick, arguing for more time to review the patient files. “The government can choose how it wants to make its case, but it cannot choose how we defend it.”

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article225176275.html

[Farmer-Rick]

2. So, the saying is proven true yet again.

Behind every great fortune is a great crime....

Though the original by a French writer went more like; "The secret of a great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found out, because it was properly executed."