$164M PONZI CHARGES HIT A CALGARY DAY TRADER

🚨 $164 million. More than 1,000 investors. One man allegedly running it all from a self-described one-man investment firm.

The Calgary Herald reports the RCMP have charged Craig Michael Thompson, 49, of Calgary with fraud and laundering the proceeds of crime in what police are calling a multi-faceted ponzi scheme.

Police allege the money came in between March 2020 and April 2024. Investors in an operation called Black Box were told their cash would be used for day trading, according to the RCMP release. They received weekly email updates on how their accounts were performing and growing.

The RCMP alleges the information in those updates was plagiarized from online sources.

🔴 Police also allege more than $163 million was shifted to separate external accounts, one of them his personal trading account at a U.S.-based firm.

The RCMP says the investigation linked him to several other invoice factoring and investment businesses: Intelsense Investment Corp., Invader Management Ltd. and Attebyte Investment Corp.

This is not the first action against him. A year ago the Alberta Securities Commission sanctioned Thompson and fined him $8.8 million in penalties and costs over what it described as a $150 million scheme. The ASC called it one of the largest ponzi schemes ever seen in Alberta and banned him permanently from trading. In its decision, the commission said money he claimed was going into day trading was instead used to pay other investors their supposed returns.

The charges are allegations and have not been tested in court.

Would a weekly email showing your account going up be enough to keep you from asking for the money back?

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