The Securities and Exchange Commission has obtained a judgment against a Las Vegas investment advisor and his company for enticing investors to put more than $2.5 million into a company called Malom Group AG, an acronym for Make a Lot of Money, the SEC announced Friday.
The U.S. District Court in Nevada ordered James L. Erwin and his company, Joint Venture Solutions Inc., both based in Las Vegas, to be banned from the financial industry and to pay disgorgement and penalties for conducting fraudulent investments.
Erwin and Joint Venture Solutions promoted a complicated fictitious investment scheme that involved five investors putting $2.5 million into securities in Malom, a Switzerland based company supposedly dealing in prime bank transactions and overseas debt instruments.
The investors were promised astronomical returns but instead lost all of their money, the SEC says. Erwin and Joint Venture Solutions received commissions for the money that was supposedly being invested.
In addition to being barred from the financial industry, Erwin and Joint Venture Solutions were each ordered to pay $146,000 in disgorgement of ill-gotten gains and penalties.