A Towson man has been indicted in a Ponzi scheme said to be one of the “largest ever charged in Maryland,” after working with co-conspirators in Texas and Nevada to defraud hundreds of investors of more than $364 million to use for their own personal gain, prosecutors say.
Representatives from the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office, FBI field office in Baltimore and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission appeared at a press conference this morning to outline the scheme in which they allege Kevin Merill, 53, and his co-conspirators, Jay Ledford and Cameron Jezierski, created 32 corporate entities to dupe investors into buying consumer debt portfolios.
To keep the scheme going, the group allegedly “lied to their investors about every conceivable aspect of the investment scheme they concocted,” said Maryland U.S. Attorney Robert K. Hur. Their system included falsifying bank transfers, making up reports on the debt they had purchased and using the web of shell companies they had created to move money around and deceive their victims, authorities said.
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