Douglas Vaughan
September 20, 2012
An Albuquerque man is sentenced to 12 years in prison for running the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of New Mexico.
Audio Transcript
Mollie Halpern: An Albuquerque man is sentenced to 12 years in prison for running the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of New Mexico.
David Backlund: There was no legitimate aspect to his investment program. It was just a complete fraud.
Halpern: I’m Mollie Halpern of the FBI. Douglas Vaughan, who ran what was once the largest independent real estate brokerage in the state, marketed his Deed of Trust program as a risk-free real estate investment. Instead, Vaughan fraudulently obtained more than $74 million from about 600 investors across the country. FBI case agent David Backlund…
Backlund: The really disgusting thing about this Ponzi scheme was that he targeted friends and he used family to recruit new investors. Worse yet is that a lot of the money that came in was retirement money from senior citizens, which they’re never going to get back.
Halpern: Through a computer forensic evaluation, investigators discovered thousands of Vaughan’s voicemails that had been downloaded to his computer.
Backlund: They were pretty egregious because you would hear investors either begging for their money or being led to believe that this was a legitimate investment.
Halpern: This has been Gotcha, the FBI’s closed case of the week.
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