skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Strib:Federal prosecutors have charged a top accounting executive at an Illinois investment firm for helping to defraud investors connected to Wayzata businessman Tom Petters.
Harold Alan Katz, a vice president of finance and accounting for Lancelot Investment Management in Chicago, conspired to create fake banking transactions to make the fund's investors believing that Petters was repaying loans in a timely manner, according to documents filed with U.S. District Court in St. Paul.
The documents, unsealed Friday by U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson, indicate that Katz has struck a plea agreement and will likely cooperate with prosecutors in their criminal case against Petters and Lancelot founder and owner Gregory Bell.
At
Dumpy Strip Malls:Besides the baseball card shows, Mounds View Square’s focal point was the Petters Warehouse. Petters Warehouse closed in October 2008 after Tom Petters was charged with leading a large investment fraud scheme.
Now that Petters Warehouse is closed, where will I buy factory-second Levis and seperated lotion from?
Petters Warehouse was basically an “outlet” store, selling overstock, discontinued products, salvage merchandise, and customer returns. That said, you can imagine the junk you’d find in this store.
Now, to be fair, it wasn’t ALL junk. Petters Warehouse was one of those stores where it depended on what day you visited. Some days = junk. Other days = treasure. In my experience, it was mostly junk.
One time, I saw a boxes upon boxes of “Body Solutions, the Evening Weight Loss Formula.” Remember this shit?! Flashback to the early ’00s – every radio DJ in the Twin Cities hawked this snake oil shit! Lose weight while you sleep! Screw exercise! Fuck following healthy diet! Just drink a teaspoon of this magic liquid and watch the pounds melt away. If PAT EBERTZ was selling this crap, you know it didn’t work. You’d probably be better off wrapping garbage bags around your body and sitting in a sauna for a few minutes than drinking this potion.
They sold clothing here too. Mostly ugly stuff. Think orange waffle shirts from Kohls in odd sizes. Flannel shirts from Sears with one sleeve longer than the other. Machiavelli-Brand Tupac Jeans. Sweatshirts with thugged-out Looney Tunes characters. Nothing says “sophistication” better than getting your wardrobe from Petters Warehouse!
However, Petters Warehouse is closed for good since Mr. Petters is rotting in a jail cell, awaiting trial.
Chicago Tribune:
Gregory Belinkov came to this country when he was a teenager, his family fleeing repression in the Soviet Union. His life since seemed to be a classic immigrant success story, topped with the creation of his own successful Northbrook-based hedge fund.
Today, Gregory Bell -- his name Americanized long ago -- sits in a Minnesota jail, barred from posting bail because federal prosecutors fear he may flee the country. Through his hedge fund firm, Lancelot Investment Management, he is accused of aiding a giant alleged Ponzi scheme centered in the Twin Cities.
Lancelot invested virtually all of the money it raised, over $2 billion, with Tom Petters, a prominent Minnesota businessman. For years, Lancelot's stake with Petters paid Bell's investors handsome and steady returns while generating tens of millions of dollars in fees for Bell.
It all vaporized last fall when Lancelot collapsed after Petters was charged with fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. Last month, federal securities regulators fingered Bell, too, claiming he participated in Petters' alleged scheme, and charged him with fraud. Bell, a 44-year-old Highland Park resident, has not entered a plea but in the past has told his investors he is a victim of Petters.
Read the whole thing.
PiPress article:
"What did the money man know?"But federal prosecutors say Shvartsman was taken into a scam, along with 250 other Lancelot investors. Their money was invested solely in notes issued by a subsidiary of Minnetonka-based Petters Group Worldwide, helping fuel a $3.5 billion Ponzi scheme, according to a complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Tom Petters is in jail awaiting trial on 20 federal fraud counts. Petters has pleaded not guilty.
Bell was arrested in Chicago in early July and brought to the Twin Cities. Ever since, he's been in the Anoka County Jail, held on federal fraud charges tied to the implosion of the Petters empire. Bell has not been indicted, nor has he entered a plea. His attorneys declined to comment for this article.
--snip--
The SEC complaint accusing Bell of securities fraud says he told Lancelot investors about the Petters investments and the strategy of short-term financing for the purchase of consumer electronics. He described the investments as legitimate and told at least one investor he had driven by warehouses to confirm the existence of the consumer goods, the complaint alleges.
But the warehouses didn't exist, prosecutors say, and investors now say Bell knew exactly what was going on.
--snip--
Along the way, Bell made hundreds of millions of dollars in fees paid by investors.
"The management, performance and other fees paid by the (Lancelot) fund were staggering, to say the least," Tradex says in its civil suit. Lancelot Offshore, one of the hedge funds run by Bell, paid more than $115 million to Bell and affiliated entities between 2004 and 2007, the suit claims.
For years, the money Bell invested with Petters apparently did come back with interest as the alleged Ponzi scheme grew. But at some point in 2007, trouble started on Petters' end.
In December of that year, Bell agreed to extend the term of every Petters note held by Lancelot for an additional 90 days. But that move wasn't enough for the overextended Petters. "By February 2008, Petters was delinquent in paying over $130 million owed to the Lancelot Funds," the SEC complaint alleges.
Even as the Ponzi scheme was falling apart, Bell's enthusiasm for the Petters investments didn't seem to wane. In the first eight months of 2008, Bell and Lancelot took in $243 million in new investor funds, according to the SEC complaint.
But by that summer, Bell had begun moving money overseas, prosecutors say. He moved $15 million to a Swiss bank account and made sure it was protected by an "asset protection trust" in the Cook Islands, prosecutors said, making him a flight risk. Bell's attorneys said in court last month they're trying to repatriate the money back into the United States.
In late September 2008, federal agents raided Petters Group Worldwide's Minnetonka headquarters, and Tom Petters was arrested at his home a few days later. As news of the trouble at Petters Co. spread, Shvartsman said he met with Bell three times. He wanted to know where his money was and whether he'd get some of it back. But the news was never good.
"(Bell) kept insisting that he lost everything," Shvartsman said.
It's a good article...
read the whole thing.
