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You operate a law firm in Texas. You are hired by a Utah business trust to represent a friend of the trust’s founder, who is facing criminal charges in New Hampshire. You represent the friend, and for your legal services you are paid $90,000 by the trust. More than four years later, you learn that the Commodity Future Trading Commission (CFTC) has brought an action in Utah against the trust, claiming that the trust is a Ponzi scheme.

On Nov. 6, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in Husky International Electronics Inc. v. Daniel Lee Ritz, Jr. and heard oral arguments in the case on March 1, 2016. The issue pending before the Supreme Court concerns whether “actual fraud” under 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(2)(A) requires a finding that a false representation was made by the debtor to the objecting creditor.

[1]In a decision that deserves the close attention of secured lenders, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that a bank’s awareness of suspicious facts about the collateral pledged to secure its loan required bank officials to perform a diligent investigation of possible fraud or other wrongdoing by its borrower.

The legal saga of the Wyly brothers continues.

Born in rural Louisiana during the Great Depression, Samuel Wyly and his older brother Charles, Jr., built a fortune from a computer company and later from steakhouses and Michael’s, an arts-and-crafts retail chain. In 2010, however, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) brought a civil enforcement action against the Wylys, alleging that they participated in an elaborate international securities fraud scheme.

In a Jan. 8, 2016, opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reminded secured lenders of their due diligence obligations when choosing to extend credit. In Grede v. Bank of New York Mellon Corp. and Bank of New York (Grede), a panel of the Seventh Circuit held that Bank of New York and its successor, Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, (collectively, the bank) were on inquiry notice of their obligation to investigate the provenance of the collateral used by Sentinel Management Group, Inc. to secure several hundred million dollars in loans made to Sentinel.

In Sikirica v. Wettach,[1] the Third Circuit held that a party seeking to avoid a fraudulent transfer under Pennsylvania’s Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act (PUFTA)[2] bears the burden of persuasion on all elements, including the insolvency of the debtor and the lack of reasonably equivalent value in exchange.

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent arrangement where an entity makes payments to investors from monies obtained from later investors, not from profits of any underlying business venture. The scheme is a variation of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Charles Ponzi is regarded as the mastermind of the first such scheme.