ATLANTA (AP) — Seven months after the collapse of an alleged $140 million Ponzi scheme that touched the top ranks of Republican politics in Georgia and Alabama, some investors are impatient to get their money back.
“We feel like we’re never going to see it, as old as we are,” Thomas Todd, a 77-year-old retired business owner, told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a meeting Monday.
Raffensperger says his office is stepping up efforts even as Republican state lawmakers want to transfer securities regulation to the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance, faulting the secretary of state’s securities division for not detecting wrongdoing at First Liberty Building & Loan before it went bust.
Federal investigators said the company defrauded at least 300 investors of at least $140 million.
Raffensperger is running for governor, and his office’s anti-fraud efforts could become an issue in May’s Republican primary.
Brant Frost IV, who led First Liberty, had decades of involvement in conservative politics. His company said it was a lender making high-interest short-term loans to businesses, paying investors up to 16% annual interest. Touting “Wall Street returns for Main Street investors,” a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit claims Frost stole $17 million for himself, his relatives and affiliated companies, and loaned millions more that borrowers never repaid.
Among those who lost money were a company run by former Georgia GOP Chairman David Shafer, Alabama state Auditor Andrew Sorrell, and a political action committee controlled by the Republican Sorrell. Party activists have said many grassroots Republicans lost money, while others were lured by ads on shows hosted by conservatives including Erick Erickson, Hugh Hewitt and Charlie Kirk.
A federal court has appointed a receiver to recover money for investors. Receiver Gregory Hays wrote Jan. 30 that he’s still piecing together 48,000 financial transactions and that some borrowers are fighting to retain real estate and other collateral that the receiver says was pledged to secure loans.
Hays reported $3.59 million in assets on hand as of Dec. 31. Since then, an auctioneer has sold five luxury vehicles that the Frost family handed over, netting almost $139,000. The receiver is also selling the First Liberty office in the Atlanta suburb of Newnan for $581,000, but first has to settle a $160,000 lien on the property. He also sold Frost’s Patek Phillipe watch for $10,000.
Hays said he’s also received more than $300,000 back from more than 1,000 political donations that the Frost family made using more than $1 million in investor funds. Those funds often backed far-right Republican insurgents.
But Hays says he’s spent $412,000 so far that will come from investor money. Hays wrote that asset recovery “will be an expensive and protracted process.”
Todd and other investors on Monday bemoaned their choices to Raffensperger. Todd said he lost $750,000 and that First Liberty collapsed just before he invested more. Todd said he was using the income to fund Christian missions. calling it “God’s money.”
“They were stealing it,” Todd said. “They knew they were stealing it. And they were working at stealing it, because they knew they were in trouble.”
Raffensperger’s office recently announced lawyer Jason Doss as an investigative agent. Raffensperger proposes a new state law letting his office order fraudsters to directly repay investors. For now, his office is limited to civil actions against wrongdoers and passing information to the receiver and state and federal prosecutors.
It’s unclear whether federal prosecutors will seek charges. A spokesperson for Atlanta U.S. Attorney Theodore Hertzberg declined to comment Monday.
Georgia House lawmakers who have gotten an earful from defrauded Republicans are pushing to give securities regulation to banking regulators.
Assistant Commissioner of Securities Noula Zaharis told the House Banks and Banking Committee on Thursday that shifting employees and responsibilities away from Raffensperger’s office on July 1, as House Bill 934 proposes, could disrupt regulation. She also said Ponzi schemes are hard to detect.
“Schemes like this are set up to create an illusion and they are schemes that pay,” Zaharis said.
But Republicans faulted her staff for not catching First Liberty.
“I just don’t really see a system or plan in place to preemptively identify these things and eliminate these bad actors before they get too far gone,” said Republican state Rep. Carter Barrett of Cumming.