Alabama-based former broker Bryan Wayne Anderson is serving more than seven years in federal prison and has been barred by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for running a Ponzi scheme.
Bryan Anderson has been ordered to pay restitution of $3,063,014 to 12 victims. He has already repaid $3.7 million to the victims, who invested approximately $6.7 million in a stock option trading program and a real estate development company from 2009 through May 2014. He previously worked for MetLife Securities Inc. and at Pruco Securities LLC.
In March 2015, Bryan Wayne Anderson pled guilty to one count of wire fraud, one count of money laundering, and one count of securities fraud. Our initial investigation on this broker back in August 2015 can be found here.
Instead of investing the money he received from investors, he used the money to finance his own lifestyle and to pay previous investors so that they would believe they were making money on their investments. Bryan Wayne Anderson issued promissory notes that were worth nothing and told investors that investments were 100 percent risk-free. The Ponzi scheme caught up with Bryan Wayne Anderson, who had promised investors a guaranteed rate of return without risk.
The SEC just made public the order making findings and imposing remedial sanctions against Anderson on Friday, Aug. 11.
Bryan Wayne Anderson had submitted an Offer of Settlement that the Commission accepted. Anderson, 42, is serving time at Federal Prison Camp Montgomery at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala. Once released from prison, Bryan Anderson will be under supervised release for three years.
Ponzi Scheme is Investment Fraud
A Ponzi scheme is a type of investment fraud that is named after Charles Ponzi, a man who ran a pyramid scam in the 1920s. He promised investors a certain return on mail coupons over three months, touting the return was even better than the interest earned in a savings account.
He took more than $1 million from unsuspecting investors even though Ponzi had purchased only $30 worth of mail coupons. Even though he didn’t invent the scam’s structure, he did operate it on the largest scale and took in the most cash by a large margin compared to other scam artists of the time. His infamy lives on by having the scam named after him.
A Ponzi scheme will always collapse because the number of new investors needed to support the scam becomes a mathematical impossibility.
A savvy investor will look for telltale signs of a Ponzi scheme.
Be wary of investments that promise high returns because they always come with high risks.
Outdated information regarding an investment’s performance can make a washed-up investment look like gold. Don’t take someone’s word for it; do your own homework.
Tricky math can make an investment sound better than it is. With a myriad of ways to calculate returns, you need to truly understand the subtle differences in presentations of averages or compounding numbers.
If you believe you have been misled by Bryan Wayne Anderson or any other broker running a Ponzi scheme, the trusted investment fraud attorneys at Meyer Wilson would like to speak with you. Call today for a free consultation with no risk to you. We work on a contingency fee basis, so you pay only if we win your case.
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