$91m on a bond-trading business that did not exist

Why this case matters

No cryptocurrency. No app, no dashboard, no blockchain, no daily percentage.

An irrevocable trust, an international bond trading business, and 3% to 6% a month — and it took $91 million from more than 200 people. The technology in these schemes is fashion. The structure underneath does not change.

What was alleged

The Vanguard Holdings Group Irrevocable Trust, controlled by Kenneth W. Alexander II, was presented as a highly profitable international bond trading business holding billions in assets. Investors were offered twelve guaranteed monthly payments of between 3% and 6%, with their principal returned after fourteen months.

The SEC alleges the bond trading business did not exist as described, and that the monthly payments came from other investors’ money. Robert D. Welsh is alleged to have operated the scheme with Alexander, and Caedrynn E. Conner to have funnelled investor money through a related program.

Millions were allegedly misappropriated for personal use, including a $5 million home.

These are allegations. The defendants have not been convicted.

The terms, read arithmetically

3% to 6% a month is 36% to 72% a year, guaranteed, with principal returned.

Set aside every question about the people, the trust and the bonds. No liquid, low-risk instrument produces that, and anything that could produce it would not need to raise money from individuals in Texas — institutional capital would have taken the whole thing at a lower cost.

That is the general test. When a return is far above the market’s and is described as guaranteed, the question is not “how are they doing this?” but “why would they share it?”

The “pay orders”

The detail worth remembering is the illusory pay orders offered as protection against loss.

Every one of these schemes contains an element addressed to the sceptical investor: a guarantee, an insurance wrapper, an audit, a bond, a licence. It exists specifically to answer the objection of the one person in the room who asks a hard question, and it is manufactured for that purpose.

An instrument you have never heard of, produced to reassure you about an investment you were already unsure of, is a feature of the scheme rather than a mitigation of it.

Why a trust

A trust sounds conservative. It carries associations of estate planning, lawyers and permanence, and “irrevocable” reads as solidity rather than as a description of what happens to your money.

It is the same move as PGI Global’s “membership” packages: choose a legal wrapper whose connotations do the persuading, and which is not obviously the sort of thing that has to be registered as a security. The SEC charged registration violations here too.