Ponzi / Pyramid

The house was supposed to be safe. It was the collateral.

The SEC alleges RAD Diversified REIT told 5,500 retail investors their money was buying rental houses. The complaint says the houses were foreclosing while the founders wired themselves federal tax payments, private jet charters, and pawn shop runs.

Latest
Ponzi / Pyramid

The good faith account was neither good, nor faith, nor an account.

William Thomas Engle, a 68-year-old former attorney in Southlake, Texas, told small business owners their upfront money would sit in secure accounts until their loans funded. It sat in his personal accounts instead, and then it sat on a yacht.

Ponzi / Pyramid

The deed was real. The signature on it was borrowed from a dead man.

Alicia England filed fake deeds using stolen identities from the living and the dead, then sold houses she never owned to buyers who found the listings on Facebook Marketplace. On July 14, 2026, a federal judge sent her to prison for 75 months.

Ponzi / Pyramid

The claims handler knew every door. She built the scheme behind them.

Jennifer Fleener spent nine years learning how her employer paid claims. Then she spent five more years turning that knowledge into $1.2 million, a network of fake policyholders in the Philippines, and eight federal sentences handed down this summer in the Southern District of Indiana.

Ponzi / Pyramid

The clinic billed for sessions that never happened. The refugees never knew their names were the product.

An Ohio couple who ran a behavioral-health clinic in Franklin County are accused of billing Medicaid $9.3 million for therapy that prosecutors say never happened, using refugee families as unknowing entries in a ledger. They are believed to be out of the country.

Ponzi / Pyramid

The doctor came back through the ninety-day door and the money still had not come home

Kitcha Veerbhadra Rao was released because prosecutors missed a filing deadline. The victims he allegedly took from were still waiting for their money when Andhra police put him back in a cell.

The Daily Brief

The apartment in Badagry had no signboard. That was the point.

Elena Ruiz · Jul 28

The license was gone by 2014. The promissory notes kept coming for twelve more years.

Elena Ruiz · Jul 28

The Instagram message promised luxury. The binary tree only needed his signature.

Elena Ruiz · Jul 28

The false name held for thirteen months. The paperwork held for five years.

Elena Ruiz · Jul 28

The house on the empty lot was built on a signature that never existed

Elena Ruiz · Jul 28

The foundation was humanitarian. The wire transfers were not.

Elena Ruiz · Jul 28

The gallery kept the lights on. The paintings were never there.

Elena Ruiz · Jul 28

The premium got paid. The policy never existed.

Elena Ruiz · Jul 27

The store was 150 square feet. The redemptions were half a million a month.

Elena Ruiz · Jul 13

The homeowners never sold. A stranger closed on their house anyway.

Elena Ruiz · Jul 13

The self-checkout was the counter. The refund desk was the register.

Elena Ruiz · Jul 13

The offering plate had a bank account behind it, and the account was his

Elena Ruiz · Jul 13

The officer wrote the report. The report was the fraud.

Elena Ruiz · Jul 13

The contractor kept coming back after the house was sold

Elena Ruiz · Jul 9
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