An Albuquerque, N.M., couple has filed for bankruptcy court protection in an effort to dodge a clawback lawsuit stemming from their lost investment with convicted Ponzi schemer Doug Vaughan, The Albuquerque Journal reported yesterday. Real estate veterans Mark and Maura Dahrling, who already face a $338,056 court-awarded judgment from a clawback against their now-closed custom homebuilding business, filed a chapter 7 petition for liquidation in July, listing their only substantial debt as $1 million from a “clawback suit.” The Dahrlings are among about 600 investors who lost about $75 million in what has been called the biggest Ponzi scheme in New Mexico’s history. The scheme was operated between about 1993 and early 2010 by Vaughan, a former real estate executive and now federal prison inmate. The Dahrlings were sued in late 2011 in a clawback action by the court-appointed trustee in charge of the bankruptcy estate of Vaughan Company Realtors, the long-closed residential real estate brokerage that Vaughan used to issue his notorious promissory notes to investors.
