Darren Berg: A Ponzi Scheme Mastermind Escapes: Part 1
The Perfect Scam
AARP
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 April 2019
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's 2009 and Bernie Madoff has pleaded guilty to stock and securities fraud in New York. Covered heavily by the media, Madoff's Ponzi scheme is front of mind for many Americans. It also has a group of investors on the West Coast concerned. They've placed their hard-earned savings with the Meridian Group, a company operating out of downtown Seattle. Its founder, Darren Berg, a well-known and respected businessman, reassures his investors that their retirement savings are safe. His firm has passed several audits, and Berg promises that there is no "magic" behind the company's robust rate of returns. Besides Meridian, Berg runs a successful charter bus company with high-profile clients like Nike, the NFL and Google. In Washington state people trust Berg, and his charismatic personality has helped him assuage investors for years. But in 2010, the house of cards Berg had built begins to fall. One of Meridian's largest investors wants to cash out, and Berg is unable to pay. Complaints roll in to the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington and the FBI. The authorities take a deeper look into the Meridian Group and confirm investors' worst fears: They are part of the largest Ponzi scheme the state has ever seen. Darren Berg's lavish lifestyle of yachts, mansions and private planes has been fraudulently funded by his investors. With the authorities working to shut the scheme down, the end of the Meridian Group is imminent, but Berg has one more trick up his sleeve.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This week on AARP the perfect scam. |
| 0:02.4 | If it suited him, he would tell somebody that he was a law school graduate, which he wasn't. |
| 0:07.1 | Or he suggested to others that he had a wife and as far as I know he didn't. |
| 0:12.0 | We trust people. |
| 0:13.0 | That's what we do. |
| 0:14.0 | We look for the good people, we look for things, |
| 0:16.0 | we feel comfortable with that person, |
| 0:18.0 | and we give them money. |
| 0:19.0 | You low down lying scoundrel. |
| 0:21.0 | What gave you the right to think you were entitled to other people's |
| 0:26.1 | hard-earned money? |
| 0:28.1 | Welcome back to AARP, The Perfect Scam. This week we're going to tell you the story of a seemingly |
| 0:33.6 | polished and successful businessman a man who cozied up to hundreds of willing |
| 0:38.2 | investors only to lead them down a trail of financial ruin Here to tell us about investment scams, often known as Ponzi |
| 0:46.2 | Schemes is Jerry Walsh. She is the president of the FINRA Foundation, right? |
| 0:50.3 | Yes. |
| 0:51.3 | And Jerry, you are my expert today. So normally we have Frank |
| 0:54.2 | Abagnale here to give his insight and expertise on all the different |
| 0:58.7 | scams we talk about, but you are uniquely positioned to give us insight into the world of Ponzi schemes. |
| 1:04.7 | That's right. We oversee the securities industry, the brokerage industry, but we encounter a lot of |
| 1:10.4 | scams along the way. Tell us what that is, what that means real quickly. |
| 1:13.0 | Finra oversees broker-dealers in the United States, |
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