Philadelphia Fund Manager Forte Charged With Fraud (another Ponzi, this one $50 mil)

[Robbien]

Source: Bloomberg

Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Philadelphia-area fund manager Joseph Forte was charged by U.S. prosecutors with mail fraud over allegations that he ran a $50 million Ponzi scheme that bilked investors including a charity, church and private school.

Forte, 53, duped around 80 investors about his fund’s investment returns between 1996 and 2008, Acting U.S. Attorney Laurie Magid in Philadelphia said in an e-mailed statement today. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, plus restitution to victims.

. . .

n an affidavit filed along with the mail-fraud charge, U.S. Postal Inspector George Clark said Forte acknowledged telling investors his fund made money trading S&P 500 stock index futures.

Forte told Clark that he “falsely reported investment returns of up to 38 percent when, in fact, he regularly lost money in his futures trading,” according to the affidavit.

Between 1998 and 2008, Forte’s records show his trading account “suffered aggregate trading losses of $3.3 million,” Clark said in the filing. In September, Forte told investors in a quarterly report that the fund had a value of more than $154 million when his trading account was worth less than $150,000, according to the affidavit.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aw2lNsjZ695g&refer=home

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There could be up to 25 more ponzi type funds out there according to research done by Morningstar

According to research done for Politico by Morningstar Inc., there were 1,684 hedge funds that have disclosed their results for the past 20 consecutive quarters. Of those, Morningstar found that 34 have never reported a down quarter in the past five years. And of those 34, at least seven funds, or their parent firms, are in some way connected to the Madoff scandal as investors in Madoff’s operation. That left 27 firms that have a five-year track record of gains and no known connection to Madoff. With the disappearance of Arthur Nadel, our list is now down to 25 funds with suspiciously positive earnings results.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0109/More_Madoffs.html

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ANOTHER PONZI

Investors in $32.6M Ponzi Scheme Win Only Camaraderie; Bank Not Liable
http://www.abajournal.com/news/investors_in_32.6m_ponzi_scheme_win_only_cameraderie_boston_bank_not_liable/

As in Bernard Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme, Bradford Bleidt stole $32.6 million by persuading those with social ties to give him money to "invest." In Bleidt's case, his victims were fellow Masons in the Boston area who typically had saved money for years while working at blue-collar jobs.

An effort to recoup some of their claimed losses was defeated, at least for now, when a federal jury in Boston determined last month that the plaintiffs' own negligence was to blame, derailing an attempt to hold liable the Boston-based bank where Bleidt kept his business accounts. However, many of Bleidt's victims have formed a close bond, which eases the sting a bit as they commiserate together, the Boston Globe reports today.

. . .

A lawyer for the victims of Bleidt, who is now serving an 11-year term in federal prison, plans to appeal the jury verdict that Sovereign Bank didn't have any reason to suspect, from the third-party checks that he deposited, that something was amiss and act to rectify the situation, according to an earlier Boston Globe article written at the time of the verdict.

[jmowreader]

1. The difference between Forte and Madoff is obvious

Forte was a bad trader, and used his Ponzi scheme to cover up for the fact he can't invest money properly. Madoff never traded; he was just running a Ponzi scheme.

Maybe President Obama should just throw the head of the SEC's enforcement branch in prison for dereliction of duty.

[MadMaddie]

2. I couldn't agree more!

I still think this is the tip of the iceberg....

[Robbien]

3. The first couple of years he was a bad trader, but after that it had to be pure ponzi

Once a hedge fund loses money, it takes a few years of really good trades to get it back to the point where hedge fund managers can take profits.

The rest of the article talks about Forte taking profits all along when there wasn't any profit to be taken. To keep it going for ten years, the man had to be using new investor money to pay out old investor profits.