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Victims of the Rick Siskey Ponzi scheme are finally expected to receive their first payments under a plan a federal bankruptcy court approved this week to partially reimburse them, the Charlotte Observer reported. The $10 million in total payouts come from insurance proceeds Siskey's widow, Diane, received following the death of her husband, who took his life in 2016 after court filings revealed he was under investigation for fraud. The disbursements will cover more than 100 investors, some of whom entrusted Siskey with hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece, according to court filings. The payments represent about 28 percent of each investor's "base claim." Original bankruptcy claims in the case reached about $50 million. But base claims, which exclude promised returns as well as money investors already got back, are about $40 million. Read more.

For a further analysis of commercial fraud, make sure to pick up a copy of ABI’s Fraud and Forensics: Piercing Through the Deception in a Commercial Fraud Case. 

Woodbridge Group is going to take two to three years to sell off its portfolio of valuable real estate holdings under bankruptcy protection, but it is determined to begin paying off investors this year, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The first payoff from Woodbridge won’t be much, said Richard Pachulski, lawyer for the official committee representing creditors of the California company. Investors might see 10 cents on the dollar on the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of debt, Pachulski said at a hearing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. Less than two weeks after the company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2017, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil fraud action against Woodbridge, accusing it of operating as a Ponzi scheme.

Former top executives at ITT Educational Services, the parent company of defunct ITT Technical Institute, have settled fraud cases with the Securities and Exchange Commission, avoiding a trial slated to begin yesterday, the Washington Post reported. A judgment order entered on Friday puts to rest civil fraud charges filed in 2015 against former ITT chief executive Kevin Modany and former chief financial officer Daniel Fitzpatrick for allegedly deceiving investors about high rates of late payments and defaults on student loans backed by the company. Neither Modany nor Fitzpatrick admitted or denied wrongdoing, but they agreed to pay penalties of $200,000 and $100,000, respectively. Both are barred from serving as officers and directors of public companies for five years. The agreement arrives nearly a year after SEC commissioners rejected an earlier settlement with the executives. In 2015, the SEC accused ITT’s top brass of making secret payments on delinquent accounts to delay defaults instead of disclosing the tens of millions of dollars in impending losses to investors. Executives assured investors in conference calls the programs were performing well, while ITT’s obligations to pay out on soured loans began to balloon, according to the complaint.

A one-time payday-loan mogul was indicted on federal charges that he made up millions of fake debts and sold them to bill collectors, victimizing people across the country, Bloomberg news reported. Joel Tucker was able to pull off the scheme because he already had his victims’ personal information from loan applications, according to an indictment unsealed June 29 in Kansas City, Mo. But many of those people never took loans, let alone failed to pay them back, and Tucker didn’t own the loans anyway, prosecutors said. From 2014 to 2016, he earned $7.3 million from packaging and selling the information to collectors, they said. Tucker was charged with interstate transportation of stolen money, bankruptcy fraud and falsifying bankruptcy records, counts that carry sentences of as much as 20 years each. The indictment, dated June 5, was unsealed on Friday after Tucker was arrested in Kansas.

A federal appeals court yesterday blocked new litigation against the estate of a Florida investor accused of helping Bernard Madoff commit fraud, after the estate had reached a $7.2 billion settlement to benefit Madoff’s customers, Reuters reported. The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit is a victory for Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee liquidating Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC after its December 2008 implosion. Picard has said that allowing the $11 billion lawsuit by A&G Goldman Partnership and Pamela Goldman against Jeffry Picower’s estate would undermine his authority to obtain settlements, while assuring settling parties they would not be sued again.