Australia convicts Ponzi scam perpetrator to 13 Years in prison
Australia's controversial financial director linked to a Ponzi scheme charged of owing investors of as much as $68 million has been convicted of more than 13 years imprisonment.
The Victorian Supreme Court has ordered that Graeme Hoy, 58, must serve a minimum of nine years in prison in spite his pleading guilty to 44 related charges of fraud while serving as director of Chartwell Enterprise, court documents showed.
Hoy's partner, Ian Stewart Rau, is already in jail for his role in Chartwell, a company that falsely claimed that they do trade in derivatives and other financial instruments but later turned out to be a Ponzi scheme.
Chartwell promised investors that it could generate returns of up to 80 percent, which drew lots of investors in 2007. When the company suddenly shut down in April 2008 because of the financial crisis, Chartwell's liquidators could not pay off investors seeking payment for tens of millions of dollars.
Aside from admittedly spending off some of the investors' money, some went to pay the very high dividend payout promised to original investors.
In a related report by the Sydney Morning Herald, Chartwell's liquidator, Bruno Secatore, of Cor Cordis, last year clawed back $180,000 from two Chartwell investors who, in the weeks before the company collapsed, had demanded and received a refund. The $180,000 represented 50 per cent of what the two investors owed.
A third investor was asked to repay more than $286,000, but the liquidators were unable to proceed after learning that the entity that received the funds now had no assets.