When the money dries up and the tides go out, you begin to see who was swimming in the nude and who was not. Canadian authorities in the past several weeks have arrested the two individuals responsible for the largest Ponzi scheme in their country’s history.
Back on September 14 was news of the first arrest:
Two Alberta men face charges for allegedly diverting more than C$100 million ($92 million) from Canadian and international investors in a Ponzi scheme.
Milowe Allen Brost, 55, of Chestermere, Alberta, and Gary Allen Sorenson, 66, of Calgary, were charged today with fraud and theft, Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in an e- mailed release. Brost was arrested and Sorenson is probably out of the country, police said.
Brost and Sorenson created Syndicated Gold Depository SA, which had agreed to lend money to Merendon Mining Corp., with the promise of tax breaks and high rates of return to investors, police said. The two men raised more than C$100 million from 1999 to Dec. 31, 2008, from investors in Alberta, Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere, police said.
The second accomplice, Sorenson, was arrested by the mounties upon his arrival at the Calgary airport. For some strange reason, Sorenson left his mansion in Honduras to face his charges:
Gary Sorenson left behind a sweeping, multimillion-dollar mansion in the hills of Honduras and boarded a private plane.
When it landed yesterday morning at the section of the Calgary airport where the city’s oil elite meet their sleek jets and skirt security lines, he was greeted by four RCMP members. The alleged mastermind of Canada’s largest Ponzi scheme, accused of defrauding $400-million from 4,000 investors, was handcuffed and whisked away to face the charges.
It was a brazen step, even for a man police believe oversaw a scheme that worked to curry investments from professional football players and once advertised on a chuckwagon at the Calgary Stampede.
Why Mr. Sorenson left Honduras – a country that has not signed an extradition treaty with Canada – is a question that even those tasked with bringing the man to justice can’t quite answer.
Though different in geography and appearance, this Ponzi scheme was functionally no different than America’s largest Ponzi scheme with Madoff.
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