Ponzi scheme - Morningbull

had unfruitful meetings with Traynor to have money returned, including those who
met him through Bradenton Christian Reformed Church and Bradenton Christian
School. Representatives of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement called
Traynor's scam a "classic Ponzi-scheme". Traynor had sold investments in Manatee
County for InterSecurities Inc., also known as ISI, since 1997, and was the company's
Bradenton branch manager before he was fired in February 2007.
• Michael Eugene Kelly (born October 6, 1949) is the owner of Yucatan Resorts, Resort
Holdings International, Puerto Cancun and Avanti Motor Corporation. He is accused
by the FBI and the United States Attorney's Office of operating a $428 million Ponzi
scheme that defrauded over a thousand elderly and senior citizens of their retirement
money. Kelly was arrested in his hospital room at the Mayo Clinic on December 22,
2006 just before he was about to be discharged and return to one of his homes in
Cancún, Mexico. In pretrial services, Kelly claimed that he makes $55,000 a year and
only has $48,000 in assets. In spite of his claim of meager earnings, Kelly offered a
private jet, four yachts and race track as collateral at his detention hearing. He was
denied bail and is currently in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Chicago waiting
for arraignment. Since his arrest, Kelly has attempted to avoid indictment by arranging
a plea agreement that includes paying restitution to the victims.
• In 2008, many Ponzi schemes are flourishing in Colombia [39] . Those schemes for
which complaints are filed are the only ones that the Colombian police have been able
to stop and have their organizers detained. Curiously, an organizer of one of these
schemes was in fact a policeman. There are many Ponzi schemes going on right now,
and even though they are quite popular and, as of February 2008, at least one of the
organizers publicly admitted operating what can be defined as a Ponzi scheme,
authorities haven't been able to act legally against the people behind organizations
such as People Winner, DRFE (Dinero Rápido, Fácil y Efectivo - Quick, Easy and
Effective Money) and DMG which have strong support from individuals who have
already got their profits. The most prominent of these organizations is DMG, which
has a strong support from their investors, since it hasn't faced any complaint from their
customers in three years. However, since DMG's mechanisms are obscure and haven't
been revealed by its founder, David Murcia Guzmán; and rumours and accusations
linking DMG with Chupeta, a well-known drug lord, Colombian government closed
DMG on November 17th [40] . Throughout this exchange of accusations, Murcia
Guzmán has accused Grupo Aval and its owner, Luis Carlos Sarmiento, of making
fake pyramids like DRFE and pushing Colombian government and media to
criminalize DMG [41] . Murcia Guzmán is now detained [42] .
• Matteo Quintavalle is - according to the source quoted in the following footnote - an
Italian scammer, who cheated investors with more than US$10 million by promising
very high yield in Costa Rican real estates and hotels. After being involved in a serie
of frauds in Italy, Mr. Quintavalle grabbed money in San Francisco,California and
went to Costa Rica and bought hotels, resorts and even soccer players ' contracts and
gave false contracts to the original investors let they think they were owning those
properties in Costa Rica. Mr. Quintavalle is currently under arrest awaiting trial.[33
• Currently (May 2008) the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation is investigating a
long running scheme where possibly over 10,000 people could have lost up to €100
million investing in WinCapita's WinClub "investment club", supposedly a currency