Matthew Beasley wasn’t surprised when three FBI agents rang his doorbell. Authorities were asking about a high-return, zero-risk investment plan that his law firm helped run. They had secret recordings of the sales pitch from a citizen sting operation that involved an embittered improv comedian, a rented private jet and a well-known New York investment firm. The agents shot twice and Beasley retreated into his house. The FBI brought in a hostage negotiator. Beasley said he wished the agents had killed him; he said he would rather die than go to prison, the Wall Street Journal reports. Bleeding from gunshot wounds in his chest and shoulder, he confessed: The investments were a Ponzi scheme. He was charged with assaulting a federal officer. The FBI continues to investigate the alleged Ponzi scheme.
Individuals allegedly put in hundreds of millions of dollars for supposedly high-reward, low-risk contracts to fund loans tied to personal-injury lawsuits through two companies, J&J Purchasing and J&J Consulting Services, according to secretly recorded conversations with marketers and the companies’ president, Jeffrey Judd. The money was wired to a bank account controlled by Beasley’s law firm on behalf of the two companies. Beasley and Judd and entities and trusts connected to them have acquired a private jet, millions of dollars worth of real estate in Nevada and Utah and top-end cars including a Rolls-Royce Dawn, two Bentley Continental GTs, a Porsche Taycan, an Aston Martin Vantage and a $500,000 RV. The strategy promoted by Judd was “the most obvious Ponzi scheme we’ve ever seen,” said Nate Anderson of the investment firm that investigated it.