Hot from the police blotter.

I go out for a couple of hours to run some errands. I come back, and I find out that the police have arrested Russell Erxleben, who was somewhat famous as a UT football player. (He actually still shares the record for longest field goal kicked in NCAA history.)

Of course, anybody can be arrested; there’s no shortage of domestic violence or DWI arrests among former football players at any level. But Erxleben is charged with running a Ponzi scheme: that’s something you don’t see every day.

The indictment said Erxleben used several companies, including WALTEC Consultants, LRE Holdings and the MDM Group, to promote investments in fraudulent ventures, mainly in post-WWI German government gold bearer bonds and in work purportedly by Paul Gauguin, the famous late 19th-early 20th century artist.

“post-WWI German government gold bearer bonds”? That sounds like something straight out of Mission: Impossible.

Also worth noting:

In 1999, Erxleben pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy and securities fraud charges stemming from a foreign currency trading scam in which hundreds of investors lost more than $30 million.

You know, I’m not Mister Sophisticated F’ing Investor here, but I’d like to think that before I gave someone $60,000 to invest in “post-WWI German government gold bearer bonds” that were purportedly worth $350,000, I’d maybe, just maybe, do A FREAKING BACKGROUND CHECK ON THE PERSON I WAS GIVING THE MONEY TO. And if that check turned up something odd, like the fact that this person got out of prison in 2005 after being convicted in a “foreign currency trading scam”, more than likely I WOULDN’T GIVE THEM ANY OF MY DAMN MONEY!

But that’s just me. As I said, I’m not a Sophisticated Investor.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2013 at 1:21 pm and is filed under Clippings, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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