The SEC has obtained a court order that halted a Ponzi scheme that raised over $11 million using a website and cold calling. New York-based Rockford Funding Group LLC “falsely touted itself as a leading private equity firm with an $800 million pipeline of investments and many Fortune 500 companies as clients,” the SEC alleges in its press release. In reality, the SEC claims, the company made no investments that would generate investor returns; instead, the Rockford Group shipped investors’ money overseas to banks based in Latvia and Hong Kong, and, in classic Ponzi scheme fashion, made dividend payments to investors with the investments of other clients.
In addition to empty promises of high returns, the SEC alleges that Rockford has made false claims related to the firm’s foundation, portfolio, identification with 20 Fortune 500 corporations, and an imminent initial public offering. “Rockford Group dressed itself up as a high-powered firm with a safe strategy to make huge returns, but everything was a lie,” commented George Canellos, Director of the SEC’s New York Regional office, in the press release. “Rockford Group pressured investors through cold calls and fooled them with a Web site, but fortunately the scheme was detected early on.”
The scam, which the press release states began several months ago in March 2009, has been halted with a court order freezing the firm’s assets along with those of its president Genadi Yagodayev and several affiliated companies, none of which were named in the release. |
