Tag: Ponzi Scheme

Religion news roundup

On March 18, 2009, Shawn Merriman visited his lawyer. Together they went to the federal government and handed them a case.

His next stop was to talk to the leaders at the Church of Latter Day Saints, where he was a respected bishop. He confessed that the company he started 14 years earlier, Market Street Investors, was a fraud.

Then he came home and told his wife.

Shawn Merriman had accumulated a $4 million fine-art collection, classic cars, expensive boats and a luxury mobile home. He had paid off the families’ million dollar house in Aurora. It had all been funded with money he stole from his clients.

Last September the admitted Ponzi-schemer was sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison in an emotion-filled hearing that included an appeal from his mother, one of his victims, to “make him pay.”

Now divorced, Andrea — who was unaware of her husband’s fraudulent business — shares her story on her blog, The Unexpected Life.

• Ponzi’s Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend
• How Ponzi Schemes and Pyramid Frauds Work
• In every Ponzi scheme, some investors profit early on. But courts can force them to return the money, even if they were unaware of the fraud.

Edward Purvis, owner of Nakami Chi Group Ministries International — a Christian non-profit that lured investors with promises to fund religious work while delivering 24 percent annual returns — was awaiting trial on fraud charges last month when a judge took the unusual step of having him arrested.

The Aug. 6 arrest was triggered by a story in The Arizona Republic that documented a trip Purvis took in April to Las Vegas to promote a gold-mine project to potential investors. At the time, Purvis was on probation after spending about a year in prison on charges related to impeding the fraud inquiry.

But state prosecutors said that is just the beginning of their case against Purvis. At an Aug. 24 hearing, they argued that he needed to remain locked up not only because there is a risk he will flee prosecution but because of the risk he poses to people still willing to give him money.

A month before he stands trial on fraud charges, Ed Purvis — the owner of a Christian non-profit accused of bilking millions out of churchgoers in Arizona and 12 other states — is now seeking an expert’s endorsement to promote a gold-mine project to investors.

He is scheduled to stand trial June 14 in Superior Court on 43 counts of criminal fraud and theft charges related to his non-profit company Nakami Chi Group Ministries International, which authorities describe as a Ponzi scheme.

The Arizona Corporation Commission has voted to sanction a Chandler couple and another city resident for their alleged involvement in a bogus church-based scheme that cost investors millions of dollars.

Edward and Maureen Purvis, Gregg Wolfe and their Scottsdale-based company — Nakami Chi Group Ministries International — were ordered to pay $11 million in restitution Wednesday and an additional $250,000 in administrative penalties.

Her husband Gregory Earl Setser was sentenced to 40 years in prison for his involvement in the scheme. His sister Deborah S. Setser was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison and Joshua Nathan Setser was sentenced to two years in prison.

Beginning in 2000 in North Texas, the defendants devised a scheme to induce people to enter into investment contracts with IPIC.

They targeted churches, ministries and religious organizations and their pastors, leaders and members and represented to investors that IPIC was a highly successful import/export business.

A California pastor and another man were convicted Friday in federal court of bilking more than 500 people out of more than $32 million in a fraudulent investment scheme.