A former Texas-based advisor who allegedly took clients to a Hooters restaurant to lure them into his Ponzi scheme has been permanently barred from the investment industry by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The SEC announced the consent agreement, under which Christopher Love Blackwell neither denied nor admitted to the allegations against him, but agreed to the terms of the sanctions.
The SEC alleges that Blackwell, working through his two companies, AV Bar Reg, Inc. and Millers A Game, LLC, illegally raised more than $4 million from at least thirteen investors by offering and selling fraudulent investments, including fixed income trading programs, hedge funds, movie distribution investment contracts and related advisory services.
His victims-whom allegedly included a former Dallas Cowboys football player-were duped by Blackwell into believing he was an investments scholar, an experienced trader and a former employee of Goldman Sachs and The Bank of Madrid. The SEC maintains he was none of those
In February, the SEC filed a complaint against Blackwell and his two companies, claiming that he enticed investors by telling them that his trading program would generate guaranteed returns of 25 to 30 percent per month. from the U.S. Federal Court Northern District of Texas.
In addition the SEC claims that Blackwell did not purchase or trade any mid-term notes or other fixed income securities, but diverted the vast majority of the investors' funds to pay for personal and business expenses, and to make Ponzi payments to prior investors.
Blackwell on June 23 was indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of wire fraud in relation to an investment fraud scheme, which he allegedly operated since January 2007, according to court documents. The indictments include allegations that he took an undercover FBI agent to a Hooters restaurant to sell him on the bogus investments.
-Jim McConville