Las Vegas Lawyer in Half-Billion Dollar Ponzi Scheme Gave $4M to Bookie

A Las Vegas lawyer accused of involvement inward a $450 trillion Ponzi scheme used $4 1000000 of investors’ money to pay off away his bookie, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The commission on Tues filed a federal lawsuit against Saint Matthew Beasley, 49, owner of the Beasley Law Group.

The suit of clothes alleges Beasley and others sold investors bastard interests inwards insurance civil wrong settlements, claiming they would invite a baseline 12.5 percent issue on investiture every 90 days.

But Beasley and his co-accused splurged on luxuriousness properties, a common soldier jet, boats, and high-end vehicles for themselves and their relatives, as considerably as paying cancelled Beasley’s prodigious gambling debts, according to the complaint.

The SEC alleges that at least $449 one thousand thousand passed through Beasley Law Group accounts from 2017 through and through March 2022, although the existent amount invested was unknown when the cause was filed.

Armed Standoff, Confession

A SEC causa tin follow a forerunner to federal crook prosecution. But currently the only felon charges Beasley faces are for pulling a gun on FBI agents seconds before they shooter him.

When the FBI called at Beasley’s Las Vegas home Mar 3 to interrogative sentence him almost the alleged Ponzi scheme, the attorney ab initio pointed the gun to his head. Then he directed it towards federal agents inward “a wholesale motion,” according to the complaint. That prompted agents to surface fire, shot him in his chest and shoulder.

Despite his injuries, Beasley refused to emerge from the property, which led to the FBI calling inward a negotiator. During the standoff, he admitted culpability inwards the scheme, according to the SEC lawsuit.

Beasley spent iv years inward the hospital before he was released into the custody of US Marshals and supercharged with one counting of assault on a federal officer.

Attorney Deals ‘Made Up’

Also named inwards the SEC suit of clothes is Jeffrey Judd, proprietor of a troupe called J&J Entities, and several of his employees. Judd was the briny plugger of the scheme, according to SEC.

He told investors he had a litigation funding concern with Beasley. Judd claimed this facilitated memory access to personal trauma lawyers whose clients had settlements with insurance companies.

He said the clients were prepared to make up a insurance premium to have a portion of their closure in set ahead rather than wait for insurance payouts.

Beasley confessed during the standoff that “he got names of attorneys for the strategy but ‘I ne'er actually talked to them,’” according to the lawsuit. “He confessed that as Jeffrey Judd found to a greater extent investors, ‘I made upwardly more attorney’s deals and simply kept growing it.’”