Alleged Las Vegas Sports Betting Ponzi Scheme Bilked $8.5M From Victims
Matthew J. Turnipseede, 49, of Las Vegas, Nev., was indicted on Th for defrauding 72 investors out of more than $8.5 million. Turnipseede ran a Ponzi scheme promising investors double-digit profits via sports wagering, the U.S. Justice Department’s Northern District of Ohio River Division alleges. He was charged with 12 counts of conducting wire humbug and ace matter of mail service fraud.
Ponzi schemes are all likewise fraudulent businesses that Pb victims to believe their profits are derived from logical business sector activity when they rely solely on new investor funds.
Algorithm and Blues
From March 2015 to May 2021, according to Turnipseede’s indictment, he induced victims to adorn inwards companies he owned past claiming they placed sophisticated sports wagers according to an algorithmic program that generated double-digit returns. The names of these companies included Edgewize LLC, Moneyline Analytics and Moneyline Analytics Irish capital Branch.
Of course, none of these companies of all time generated double-digit profits. Instead, they were propped up by new investor money, which was also used to compensate sour before investors, seek young sources of finances and fund personal expenses. According to the indictment, these expenses included house vacations to Disneyland and Hawaii, spa treatments, engage payments on multiple vehicles and land society membership dues.
Don’t Account on It
To perpetuate the Ponzi scheme, Turnipseede is accused of periodically emailing fraudulent financial statements to victims purporting to present real gains on their investments and employing an method of accounting solid to generate IRS forms based on fraudulent figures provided to the solid past the defendant.
Whenever a dupe sought-after(a) to recede some or all of their investment, according to the indictment, the defendant used money from other victims’ contributions to deal the withdrawal.
Turnipseede’s slip was investigated by the Grover Cleveland FBI and is beingness prosecuted past Assistant U.S. Attorneys Erica D. Barnhill and Brian McDonough.
The First Ponzi Scheme
Ponzi schemes are named after Italian con artist and businessman Jacques Charles Ponzi. In 1920, Ponzi earned an estimated $15 billion inwards octad months past convincing lenders inward the US and Canada that he could make water them rich with investments inward international postal response coupons. Ponzi served triad and a half years inwards federal prison for the scheme.
The to the highest degree famous Ponzi strategy in modern font times was pass past Bernie Madoff, a former NASDAQ gillyflower exchange chair who conned thousands of investors come out of $20 one million million inwards corpus finances over a point of several decades. After his stay in 2008, he was sentenced to 150 years in prison, where he died in 2021 at age 82.