A former five-term member of the Georgia State Legislature has been ordered to pay more than $10 million in disgorgement and interest for orchestrating a $23 million investment scheme that targeted people who had ancestry in or ties to India, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced yesterday.

The final judgment was issued April 2 by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia against Clarence Dean Alford, who also served on the Georgia Board of Regents, which oversees the state’s colleges and universities. The fraud charges brought by the SEC were connected to Alford’s position as CEO and president of Allied Energy Services, a company that supposedly funded energy projects.

The judgment was part of a consent agreement in which Alford neither admitted to nor denied the allegations.

The SEC charged Alford, who is from Conyers and Eatonton, Ga., with raising $23 million from more than 100 investors in the Indian-American community by misleading them into thinking he was leading a profitable company. The scheme fell apart after two years in 2019 when he ran out of money, the SEC complaint said. Alford sold unregistered, high-yield promissory notes supposedly issued by Allied that were to be used to fund energy projects. Alford lied to investors about, among other things, Allied's financial condition, the SEC said..

Instead of using the money for energy projects, Alford used the funds to pay early investors; for unrelated projects, including a waste-to-energy project and a solar energy project, and for his personal use. Among other things, Alford used the money to pay an architect for a multimillion dollar home in Utah, to buy a Tesla automobile and to pay credit card debt, the complaint said.

Alford misled investors by reporting that Allied had millions in assets and revenues from 2016 through 2018, even though Allied's federal tax returns reflected that, during the same time period, it had less than $1 million in assets and far less in gross receipts, the complaint said

The court ordered Alford to pay $8.8 million in disgorgement and interest of $1.7 million.

“Alford was a prominent member of the community who misled retail investors for personal gain,” Justin Jeffries, associate regional director for the SEC’s Atlanta Regional Office, said in a statement. “Investors should be wary whenever they are promised guaranteed, lucrative investment opportunities.”