Federal prosecutors are moving to seize seven homes and eleven vehicles allegedly bought with money from more than 1,000 investors who believed Christopher Delgado was running a crypto liquidity pool. Court filings say almost none of the $328 million ever reached a pool.
Edwin Emmett Lickiss, Jr., 78, of Danville, pleaded guilty this week to running a Ponzi scheme that lasted from 1998 to 2024 and took at least $9.5 million from more than 93 investors. The license he needed to do any of it was gone by 2016.
Matthew Piercey raised $35 million from neighbors and churchgoers in Redding, then tried to disappear into Lake Shasta with a battery-powered underwater scooter when the FBI came for him. On May 21, 2026, a federal judge gave him 30 years.
John Walters was the chief compliance officer at Northwest Capital. On May 18, 2026, he became the first person sentenced in a $72 million Ponzi case that ran for ten years. The lock was inside the door.
The last defendant in California's largest Ponzi scheme was sentenced this spring. The fraud ran on solar generators most of which were never built, sold to investors who wanted the tax credit and believed the paperwork.
Edwin Brant Frost IV built a faith-flavored finance company in Newnan, Georgia, that promised conservative investors safe returns on bridge loans. On May 12, 2026, he pleaded guilty to wire fraud. About 300 people had already learned what the notes were really paying with.
Christopher Delgado told a television camera he failed his investors. The federal complaint says he ran a three-year crypto Ponzi that drained more than 2,000 people while he bought houses, watches, and silence. The math of what remained tells the rest.
Matthew Motil built a brand before he built a fraud. The brand was a podcast, a book, and a nickname. The fraud was a stack of mortgages on houses he kept selling to people who never met each other.
Arsen Lusher told more than twenty investors he ran a profitable trucking company with contracts at major retailers. Federal prosecutors say the trucks were a story, the returns were other people's money, and the falsified bank statements were the last room of the house before it came down.
Christopher Knight Lopez ran a Houston investment shop for nearly ten years on forged bank letters and a fictional $2 billion in Treasury bonds. On May 7, 2026, a federal judge called it the most offensive white-collar crime he had seen.
Vincent Camarda built A.G. Morgan Financial Advisors in a Massapequa storefront and steered at least $138 million of his clients' retirement money into a Philadelphia Ponzi, a western mining bet, and his son's coffee startup. On April 3, 2026, he pleaded guilty.
Christopher Knight Lopez ran a fraudulent investment shop out of Katy, Texas for nearly ten years, forging bank letters and selling access to $2 billion in Treasury bonds that did not exist. On May 7, 2026, a federal judge called it the worst white-collar crime he had seen from the bench.
Xu Qing fled China in November 2024 after allegedly running a $245M Ponzi scheme. He spent seventeen months inside a factory in Ogun State before Nigerian police walked in. The arrest is a story about where machines go when they stop running.
Shelley Simpson sold luxury holidays that were never booked, then used the next customer's deposit to cover the last customer's lie. On May 6, a Portsmouth judge called it a dance of deception and sent her to prison for 33 months.
A pig-butchering Ponzi run under the names BG Wealth Sharing and DSJ Exchange collected what on-chain investigators estimate may exceed $150 million before the U.S. seized its domain in early May. The withdrawal button had already been turned off.
Warith Deen Muhammad sold a precious metals trade that paid 5 to 10 percent in thirty days. Federal prosecutors say the gold was a story and the investors were the inventory. On Wednesday he was sentenced to four years and two months.
John Robert Leake pitched gold mines in Ghana and villas in Costa Rica. Six investors gave him roughly $8.1 million. Federal prosecutors are now asking a California court to garnish the NFL benefits he earned as a linebacker to pay back what the court says he stole.
David Vernon Lott told investors his Missouri Holding Group could turn one dollar into ten. A federal grand jury says the dollars went into a roof over his own head, and then into twelve careful slices when the roof was sold.
Miles Burton Marshall pleaded guilty this week to running a $50 million Ponzi scheme out of his Hamilton, New York tax practice for more than three decades. The 988 people who trusted him were mostly his own clients, and the fund that bore his promise had a name that was also its alibi.
On the morning of April 27, 2026, with closing arguments approaching in a 24-felony fraud trial, Gary Rathbun was found dead in his vehicle in Wauseon, Ohio. The $72 million Ponzi scheme he allegedly helped run for a decade did not die with him.