Dee Randall ran one of Utah's largest Ponzi schemes, raising more than $72 million from approximately 700 investors nationwide.

On June 18, 2014 Utah Attorney General Sean D. Reyes' office filed a criminal information and affidavit of probable cause against Randall for multiple counts of securities fraud and other related charges. Randall, a resident of Kaysville, Utah, was charged with 21 second degree counts of felony securities fraud, one third-degree felony securities fraud count, and one second degree count of pattern of unlawful activity.

At the initial hearing on his criminal case victims testified that Randall, who was the owner of Horizon Mortgage & Investment, sold what he called "Horizon Notes" which were supposed to pay annual returns of 9 to 17 percent. Investors were told that their funds would be used to finance car loans and real estate, but in reality Randall used investor funds for other things, such as payments to his other entities and payments to earlier investors – a classic Ponzi scheme.

What is unique about this case is Randall argued in court that although it may have been a Ponzi it was nevertheless legal because he disclosed it to his investors in the Private Placement Memoranda (or PPM). Specifically, he disclosed that he was going to use new investor money to make payments to earlier investors, apparently hoping such a disclosure would get around securities laws. So if you tell someone you're going to defraud them is it still fraud?

Keith Woodwell, head of the Utah Division of Securities, says there's no such thing as a "legal fraud" since Utah law also says it is illegal to operate a business in way that defrauds investors. "Using money from new investors to pay older investors, with no way to generate profits to pay people back, is a fraud regardless of whether you disclose it or not." This novel argument was also rejected by the bankruptcy judge.

My question is this: did anyone ever actually read the Horizon PPM? PPM's are required for a non-registered offerings of securities and are definitely worth reading before you invest. In this case potential investors who read the PPM would have discovered that their money was going to be used to pay off other investors and (hopefully) would have declined to participate in this investment opportunity. But the unfortunate reality is that hardly anyone ever reads PPM, they are long and usually difficult to understand.

After months of legal maneuvering, this week Randall finally pleaded guilty to four counts of securities fraud and one count of pattern of unlawful activity, each punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Sentencing is set for Feb. 6, 2017.

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