A court-appointed receiver wants to sell off a wine collection, a private jet and two Cadillacs, among other property, to pay off victims of an alleged Ponzi scheme involving a Caribbean offshore bank, according to court documents.
Receiver Richard Roper III asked a federal judge in Texas to authorize the sale to help compensate hundreds of Americans who had invested at least $68 million since 2004 in the alleged scheme.
The assets belong to several people, including businessman William Wise of Raleigh, N.C., whose Millennium Bank on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent is accused of selling fictitious certificates of deposit at much-higher-than-average interest rates.
Rope's request to the U.S. District Court in Texas targets $250,000 in wine Wise allegedly has stored in St. Vincent and several U.S. states, as well as a $5.7 million Challenger 601-1A jet named "Spirit of Millennium" and several vehicles, including two 2009 Cadillac Escalades. It was not clear who owns the cars.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission says the Millennium deposits were not used for legitimate banking investments but rather were sent to an account in California that the defendants used for personal expenses and relatively small Ponzi payments to investors.
The SEC complaint said the defendants orchestrated the scheme through Millennium Bank and its Geneva, Switzerland-based parent United Trust of Switzerland SA, as well as U.S.-based affiliates of both organizations.
Judge Reed O'Connor in Texas already has granted the SEC's request for an asset freeze and emergency relief for investors.
