Three California men arrested for running alleged $200 million Ponzi scheme

Gary T. Armitage (State Department of Justice)

Three California men have been arrested for running an alleged $200 million Ponzi scheme that targeted Bay Area retirees.  James Stanley Koenig, Gary T. Armitage and Jeffery A. Guidi are accused of creating a network of 55 business ventures, which they presented as safe real estate investments that offered up to 12 percent returns.

According to the charges filed by the Attorney General’s office on May 22, the funds were instead used to “bankroll their extravagant lifestyles.”  In a press release issued May 22, the Attorney General said the men swindled thousands of retirees out of their life savings to purchase an 80-acre castle estate, a Lear jet and luxury cars.

The arrests come at the conclusion of a yearlong probe into AGA Financial.  According to investigators, the men began holding “investment planning seminars” in 1997 to encourage people to invest their savings in construction and real estate projects across California.

According to the charges, as many as 2,000 retirees invested with AGA Financial over 10 years; and, though the alleged Ponzi scheme began to collapse in April 2007, the men recruited as much as $23 million from 91 new investors.  An article on the arrests, and ongoing coverage of the story, can be found at the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.