Million Dollar Movie Ponzi Scheme, Part 2
The Perfect Scam
AARP
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 December 2019
⏱️ 25 minutes
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Summary
Beloved Vermont children's entertainer-turned-filmmaker Mac Parker has been raising funds for his film "Birth of Innocence" for nearly a decade. The film has yet to be completed, and what investors were promised — a three year, $1 million project — has ballooned in both time and cost. When the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation steps in to investigate irregularities in Mac's fundraising practices, they discover he's operating a $28 million Ponzi scheme. They dig deeper and find Mac has a silent partner named Lou Soteriou, a chiropractor in Connecticut who is being purposefully hidden from investors. Over the years, Lou has received more than $4 million in payments from Mac. Realizing the scope of the case, Vermont investigators call in the FBI. As federal agents unravel this enormous Ponzi scheme, it becomes clear that the relationship between Mac and Lou is a complicated one. The investigators are left wondering, who really is the mastermind behind this crime?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Coming up on this episode of AARP's The Perfect Scam. |
| 0:05.0 | The Ponzi scheme succeeds, often by the power of the personality, |
| 0:10.0 | of the person that's running it, or the promise that whatever it's aimed around holds. |
| 0:17.0 | Welcome back to the perfect scam and part two of our Mac Parker Ponzi scheme story. |
| 0:25.0 | If you haven't listened to part one, now is a great time to do that. |
| 0:30.0 | We pick up our story just as investigators made the shocking discovery that beloved Vermont |
| 0:36.0 | storyteller Mac Parker, who's running a massive Ponzi scheme, isn't acting alone. |
| 0:47.0 | This is Bill Kerrigan, lead investigator on the case. And it turns out it was an accomplice |
| 0:50.0 | who had lived in Middlebury, Connecticut by the name of Lou Satreio. |
| 0:55.0 | Mac had funneled off close to $4 million to Lou. |
| 1:00.0 | He didn't come to light until after we had subpoenaed the bank records and started going |
| 1:05.8 | through and seeing the money being funneled off. |
| 1:08.8 | So that was really when it all came tumbling down. We filed charges to Fries's bank account. Our case was |
| 1:16.0 | stayed while the case was going through at the federal level. Now the case is at the federal level. |
| 1:28.0 | Now the case is at the federal level and assigned to it is supervising special agent Dan Racheck from the FBI office in Burlington, Vermont. |
| 1:33.2 | I have him on the line with me now. |
| 1:36.6 | Let me start by asking you, why did the FBI get involved in the Mac Parker case? |
| 1:40.6 | The Vermont Department of Financial Regulation contacted us because they realized the size and the scope of the |
| 1:45.4 | case was outside of Vermont's boundaries, was outside of Vermont's jurisdiction and involved |
| 1:50.2 | multiple states and involved money going back and forth. So at that point because it's crossing |
| 1:54.8 | state lines and it's involving multiple investors across state lines the FBI |
| 1:59.1 | will get involved and then conduct the criminal investigation. So who is this Lou Suiterio? |
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