Tag: Ponzi scheme

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday that it obtained an emergency court order to freeze millions of dollars in the assets of Golden, Colorado-resident Richard Dalton, who the SEC alleges has been running a Bernie Madoff-style Ponzi scheme. As head of Universal Consulting Resources LLC, Dalton allegedly told investors he was using their money as leverage to secure loans to "purchase and sell bank notes" to finance a diamond trading business. It was the kind of convoluted program that only friends and family could sell and, according to the SEC, it sold well by word of mouth alone.

All it takes is a little Talking Points Memo magic. The Colorado Independent reported yesterday that Jane Norton told the crowd gathered at the...

Republican candidates for Colorado's top offices have been spurred at Tea Party primary-election events to take strong anti-government positions that have alarmed moderate and liberal voters and that in the YouTube era might compromise their standing with general election voters in the summer and fall.

After losing his entire life savings to the Bernie Madoff con job, former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo has a better idea for punishing the 71-year-old convicted swindler, who was sentenced Monday to 150 years in prison for masterminding the largest Ponzi scheme in history. "I think I probably would've sold tickets and let the highest bidder come beat him up with a baseball bat and then divide up the money among all the people that he stung," Tancredo said Monday "with a laugh," 9News reports.

The Securities and Exchange Commission sought to freeze the assets of Shawn Merriman and his Market Street Advisors firm Wednesday, alleging the Denver-based money manager bilked investors of as much as $20 million to finance his "lavish lifestyle," Bloomberg reports. The lawsuit, filed by federal regulators in U.S. District Court in Denver, alleges Merriman operated a Ponzi scheme for 15 years and spent proceeds on "his own personal purchases of classic cars, motorcycles, motor homes, a cabin in Idaho, and fine art collections, including works by Rembrandt that are worth millions of dollars."