About 30 Filipino senior citizens were conned of US$ 5 million in a Ponzi scam in California, where they were assured of their money being invested in the Pagudpud Sands Resort being supposedly constructed in the Philippines.
The victims included an 83-year-old who invested $230,000 and an 84-year-old woman ($500,000), besides the others investing thousands of dollars.
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Around 15 persons were charged by California’s attorney general Rob Bonta on Friday of conspiring to cheat the victims living in the Sacramento and Stockton areas.
While the fraudsters had allegedly said that a major, well-known hotel company had agreed to manage the resort, the victims received “interest” on their investments that actually came from other victims’ investments instead of the resort, prosecutors said.
The defendants allegedly lied to potential investors during group sales presentations since late 2015 to attract investments.
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However, most of the money collected for funding the resort was instead used for two of the defendants about US$10,000 a month, while thousands of dollars were paid in commissions for those bringing in additional investors or for other unrelated marketing schemes, the prosecutors stated.
Grand theft, financial elder abuse, selling unqualified securities, securities, fraud, and communications containing untrue statements and omissions of material facts are among the 98 separate charges filed in Sacramento County Superior Court against the fraudsters. (AW)
