{"id":4472,"date":"2018-04-09T16:35:39","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T20:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/Life-Insurance-Blog\/?guid=ffd159e0aaea20789422f0005f0bd8fe"},"modified":"2018-04-09T16:35:39","modified_gmt":"2018-04-09T20:35:39","slug":"sec-accuses-2-texas-companies-with-running-ponzi-scheme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/2018\/04\/09\/sec-accuses-2-texas-companies-with-running-ponzi-scheme\/","title":{"rendered":"SEC accuses 2 Texas companies with running Ponzi scheme"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Federal regulators accuse two Texas companies and their leaders of defrauding elderly investors in a Ponzi scheme.<\/p>\n<p>The Securities and Exchange Commission said Monday that it accused Clifton E. Stanley, 66, of Galveston, Texas; The Lifepay Group; Michael E. Watts, 62, of Sugar Land, Texas; and SMDRE LLC with violating securities-registration and antifraud laws.<\/p>\n<p>John Cossum, a Houston attorney for Watts, said his client denies the allegations. Stanley&#8217;s lawyer did not immediately return a call for comment.<\/p>\n<p>The SEC says from 2010 to 2017 Stanley lured at least 30 elderly victims in Texas and Louisiana to invest about $2.4 million in Lifepay by touting them as safe investments with returns up to 36 per cent a year. The commission says he paid early investors with money from later ones.<\/p>\n<p>The SEC also said in a civil complaint filed in federal district court in Houston that starting in 2015 Stanley and Watts convinced elderly people to invest about $1.4 million in SMDRE, an oil and gas company they controlled.<\/p>\n<p>The SEC asked the court to force the men to give up any ill-gotten gains and pay civil penalties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Federal regulators accuse two Texas companies and their leaders of defrauding elderly investors in a Ponzi scheme. The Securities and Exchange Commission said Monday that it accused Clifton E. Stanley, 66, of Galveston, Texas; The Lifepay Group; Michael E. Watts, 62, of Sugar Land, Texas; and SMDRE LLC with violating securities-registration and antifraud laws. John [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":578,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4472"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/578"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4473,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4472\/revisions\/4473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}