Last August we presented the story of a very sad and misguided individual, one Athony Davian, who was then the first person charged with running a ponzi scheme off twitter. Specifically, we said:
Once upon a time there was a Twitter-based, pump-and-dumping daytrading bucket shop posing as a “successful hedge fund manager” also known as Davian Letter/Davian Capital Advisors run by an Ohio gentleman known as Anthony Davian, which for reasons unknown even managed to run outside capital (somehow raking up to $1.5 million in idiot AUM, mostly courtesy of his very aggressive self promotion on Twitter using the @hedgieguy handle), and which didn’t like Zero Hedge much.
(but that’s ok because the feeling was mutual – we had advised the SEC in late 2009 that the Davian operation was nothing but a ponzi scheme).
A few years later, said outside capital is gone (with losses that could have been prevented had the SEC moved earlier) and moments ago, following a four year delay since our notice, the SEC has finally acted and charged Anthony Davian with fraud.
Today, the sad story of Anthony “@Hedgieguy” Davian…
… comes to an end with his guilty plea to charges of fraud.
From Cleveland.com:
A Copley man today pleaded guilty to charges he operated a fraudulent investment scheme that caused his investors to lose about $1.8 million.
Anthony Davian, 34, was charged with 14 counts of securities fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. He is scheduled to be sentenced July 2.
“This defendant deceived clients to line his own pockets,” said U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach. “We will continue to aggressively pursue cases in which investors are cheated out of their savings.”
Davian grew up in Parma and graduated from Holy Name High School in 1998. He attended the University of Akron but did not
graduate.
According to charging documents, from 2008 to 2013, Davian used his hedge fund, Davian Capital Advisers, LLC, to promote and sell securities to at least 20 investors across several states, resulting in $1.8 million in overall investor loss.
Davian purported to sell securities in the form of shares in the various funds he created and controlled, including Davian Capital, Rubber City Gravity, Rubber City Pure Alpha, Cleveland Precious Metals Fund, and others.
Instead, he used the investors’ monies to pay back earlier investors, to enrich himself, and to pay off personal expenses, such as the purchase of an Audi Q7 Prestige, and the construction of a luxury home, according to the information.
The investigation revealed that Davian cajoled investors’ into giving him hundreds of thousands of dollars by claiming to manage hundreds of millions of dollars to make himself appear more sophisticated than he really was, and by falsifying client account statements, according to the information.
Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Davian and his Richfield-based hedge fund company with defrauding investors. The agency’s complaint characterized Davian Capital as “nothing more than Davian’s personal piggy bank,” and called Davian’s promise of returns on investments “figments of Davian’s imagination.”
One down. Many more to come.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1lkdumB Tyler Durden