Russell Cline

Last updated

Russell Warren Brent Cline (born about 1965) founded Orion International in 1998, a foreign currency trading firm based in Portland, Oregon. In 2003 he was charged in federal court with running a classic Ponzi scheme. Cline pleaded guilty and was imprisoned at USP Lompoc.

History

Cline was a former house painter from Baker City, Oregon. In 1998 he founded Orion International, specializing in trading foreign currency through a brokerage based in London. They promised returns anywhere from 60% to 200% with very little risk, because of their sophisticated trading techniques.

In August, 2002 Cline notified his customers that he had lost 97% of their money, blaming poor trades and typographical errors, and asked for additional funds to make the money back. In reality the money had been spent on luxury cars, private jets, real estate, and boats. It is estimated that over 600 people invested $27 million in Orion.

On May 8, 2003 a federal court froze all Cline's assets and prevented any document destruction at Orion. He was indicted along with other Orion employees, including Samantha Vorachith, April Duffy and Nancy Hoyt. In May, 2004 Cline was charged in federal court with 39 counts of money laundering and fraud. Violating his pretrial release he was arrested for possession of methamphetamines in December and placed in the Multnomah County jail.

Duffy, Hoyt and Vorachith were ordered to pay over $1.3 million in restitution to defrauded customers and fines on September 7, 2004. The three defendants consented to the order without admitting or denying guilt, and were additionally barred permanently from trading futures contracts.

The property of the company's employees was also arrested within the framework of a criminal case and foreclosed. An example of a case of recovering a car from a company trader - Civil No.  03-1539-MA Toschakov Igor Robertovich on the recovery of the 2001 BMW X5.

In July, 2005 Cline pleaded guilty in federal court to two counts of mail and wire fraud and one count of money laundering, admitting to defrauding investors out of at least $16 million. On February 6, 2006 Cline was sentenced to 8 years and 1 month in the La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution in Anthony, Texas. The sentence was the maximum agreed upon wherein Cline would not appeal his case. U.S. District Judge Garr King said he would have given a longer sentence, having felt Cline had lied to the court and was generally uncooperative, if it wasn't for his guilty plea. Cline was also ordered to pay over $33 million in restitution. [1]

He was released on March 30, 2012.

Related Research Articles

Barry Jay Minkow is a former American businessman, pastor, and convicted felon. While still in high school, he founded ZZZZ Best, which appeared to be an immensely successful carpet-cleaning and restoration company. However, it was actually a front to attract investment for a massive Ponzi scheme. It collapsed in 1987, costing investors and lenders $100 million: one of the largest investment frauds ever perpetrated by a single person, as well as one of the largest accounting frauds in history. The scheme is often used as a case study of accounting fraud.

Wes Cooley (politician) American politician and rancher

Wester Shadric Cooley was a Republican politician and rancher from Oregon. He was a U.S. Representative from Oregon's 2nd congressional district for the 1995–1997 term.

Omega Trust was a fraudulent US investment scheme in Illinois.

Banco Intercontinental

Banco Intercontinental was the second largest privately held commercial bank in the Dominican Republic before collapsing in 2003 in a fraud tied to political corruption.

Russell Erxleben is a former American football player and currency investor. He shares the record for the longest successful field goal in NCAA history at 67 yards, which he set in 1977 while playing for the University of Texas. Erxleben was a three-time All-America punter. He was drafted in the first round of the NFL Draft, an extremely rare occurrence for a kicker. After an NFL career lasting six years, he became a currency investor. Convicted of securities fraud in 1999, he was released from federal prison in 2005. He was again convicted of investment fraud in 2014 and sentenced to 90 months in federal prison.

Philip Bloom (businessman) American businessman

Philip Bloom is an American businessman who pleaded guilty on April 18, 2006 to conspiracy, bribery and money laundering in connection with a scheme to defraud the Coalition Provisional Authority – South Central Region (CPA-SC) during the occupation of Iraq. According to the Sydney Morning Herald Bloom used CPA funds to pay out over $2 million USD in bribes, in cash, real estate, designer cars, watches, and the services of prostitutes he brought to Bagdad. Bloom accepted at least $1 million in bribes and stole a further $600,000 in cash and goods from CPA funds.

Foreign exchange fraud is any trading scheme used to defraud traders by convincing them that they can expect to gain a high profit by trading in the foreign exchange market. Currency trading became a common form of fraud in early 2008, according to Michael Dunn of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The Bayou Hedge Fund Group (1996-2006) was a group of companies and hedge funds founded and headed by Samuel Israel III. Approximately $450m was raised by the group from investors, who were defrauded from nearly the start with funds being misappropriated for personal use.

Michael Eugene Kelly was a dual citizen of the U.S. and Mexico who operated a number of fraudulent resort enterprises and the Avanti Motor Corporation. In 2007, with 23 others, he was accused by the FBI and the United States Attorney's Office of operating an enormous Ponzi scheme that defrauded over a thousand elderly and senior citizens of their retirement money. It was later disclosed that 7,000 victims from throughout the U.S. lost more than $342 million.

Joel Nathan Ward was a foreign currency trader, who has confessed to fraud and money laundering and was sentenced to nine years in Federal prison, plus three years of supervised release.

The redemption movement is a debt-resistance movement and fraud scheme which is primarily active in the United States and Canada. Participants allege that a secret fund is created for every citizen at birth, and that a procedure exists to "redeem" or reclaim this fund to pay bills. Common redemption schemes include acceptance for value (A4V), Treasury Direct Accounts (TDA) and secured party creditor kits. Such tactics are sometimes called "money for nothing" schemes, as their aim is ultimately to extract money from the government by using secret methods.

Joseph S. Forte of Broomall, Pennsylvania, operated a Ponzi scheme that cost investors $50 million. He reportedly signed a confession with the United States Postal Inspection Service.

Stephen Walsh is an American former money manager who pleaded guilty to securities fraud.

Paul Greenwood is a former American money manager and town supervisor who was convicted of securities fraud with business partner Stephen Walsh.

Sean David Morton is a self-described psychic and alleged remote viewer who has referred to himself as "America's Prophet." Until legal troubles led to his incarceration in a federal prison, he also hosted radio shows, authored books, and made documentary films. In 2010, Morton and his wife were charged with civil securities fraud. The director of the New York regional office of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) stated that "Morton's self-proclaimed psychic powers were nothing more than a scam to attract investors and steal their money." In 2016, Morton and his wife were indicted on Federal tax-related charges, and were found guilty in April 2017. He served a Federal prison sentence.

5Linx American multi-level marketing company

5Linx is an American multi-level marketing company headquartered in Rochester, New York, which offers utility and telecommunication services, health insurance, nutritional supplements, and business services. It was founded in 2001. In 2017, the co-founders of 5LINX, Craig Jerabeck, Jeb Tyler, and Jason Guck, were indicted on multiple federal fraud charges, including wire fraud and money laundering. They admitted to defrauding $2.3 million from investors, illegally depositing company revenues into personal accounts, and failing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes. Tyler and Jerabeck were sentenced to 14-month prison terms in December 2018.

<i>Kids for Cash</i> 2013 documentary film directed by Robert May

Kids for Cash is a 2013 documentary film about the "kids for cash" scandal which unfolded in 2008 over judicial kickbacks in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Two judges were found guilty of accepting kickbacks in exchange for sending thousands of juveniles to detention centers when probation or a lesser penalty would have been appropriate. Some juveniles were sent to detention centers for incidents as minor as theft of a CD from Walmart.

The forex scandal is a 2013 financial scandal that involves the revelation, and subsequent investigation, that banks colluded for at least a decade to manipulate exchange rates on the forex market for their own financial gain. Market regulators in Asia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States began to investigate the $4.7 trillion per day foreign exchange market (forex) after Bloomberg News reported in June 2013 that currency dealers said they had been front-running client orders and rigging the foreign exchange benchmark WM/Reuters rates by colluding with counterparts and pushing through trades before and during the 60-second windows when the benchmark rates are set. The behavior occurred daily in the spot foreign-exchange market and went on for at least a decade according to currency traders.

Brian Kim is an American former hedge fund manager. He founded the now-defunct Liquid Capital Management LLC, which focused on futures trading.

References

Notes
  1. ↑ "Court Orders Russell Cline of Portland, Oregon, to Pay over $33 Million". U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. January 11, 2007. Retrieved April 19, 2010.[ dead link ]
Bibliography
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.