Losses by investors in the Caribbean-based Millennium Bank are more than triple what U.S. authorities initially projected and little is likely to be recovered, a court-appointed receiver says in a new report on the case.
Millennium and its affiliates took in more than $246 million since 2006, receiver Richard Roper said in an update filed in a federal court in Texas. The total includes supposed gains from allegedly fraudulent certificates of deposit rolled over by investors into new investments, but a breakdown wasn't given.
Roper also had bad news for the more than 800 investors, reporting that months of selling assets and searching for bank accounts has yielded only a small percentage of the missing millions.
What will be available to pay claims will be far less than expected, he said. "Indeed, investors stand to recover little cash, if any, on their investment," he said in the report, filed with the court Friday.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had said investor losses totaled at least $68 million when the agency filed suit in March alleging that William J. Wise and several associates ran a Ponzi scheme through the bank, based in the eastern Caribbean nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Lawyers for investors had predicted the total losses would grow higher.
No comments:
Post a Comment